Effects Of The Attentional Blink On Attention Capture

In the area of visual cognition, by the investigation on attention capture and attentional blink, understanding about how visual information is spatially and temporally selected has been enhanced. However the relationship between the attentional mechanisms controlling the spatial and temporal selection of visual information has not been fully discussed. The present study focused on whether spatial attention can be shifted during the attentional blink. In the first two experiments, effects of the attentional blink on the attentional shift between non-onset object and onset object (Experiment 1) and the attentional shift between two sequentially presented onset objects (Experiment 2) were investigated. In Experiment 3, two targets may appear at the same location or not, whether this spatial congruency effect can be absorbed by the attentional blink was investigated.The main findings are as follows:(1) Abrupt onset object presented during the attentional blink can retain its priority in attention capture.(2) When two objects presented sequentially during the attentional blink, the second object no longer get the priority in attention capture.(3) The spatial congruence effects can not be absorbed by the attentional blink.Based upon these results, the author suggests that spatial and temporal selection of visual information is controlled by the same attention mechanism. During the attentional blink, attention can not be captured by the onset of a new object.