Note The Effect Of The Range On The Attention To The Instantaneous Release

When asked to identify targets among a series of distractors, all presented serially at a rate of about 10 item/s, participants usually identify the first target accurately, but show a deficit in identifying the second target if the second target appears at 200-500ms after the first target. This phenomenon is termed as attentional blink (AB).Besides numerous studies exploring the nature of AB, recently there is intensive interest in examining the effect of affect on AB. To account for this effect, most prior literature emphasizes the mediation role of attention scope. An important assumption underlying this mediation explanation is that broadened attention scope would reduce AB. Two correlational studies examined the relationship between attention scope and AB, and the results suggest a negative correlation between them. This negative correlation may be caused by the fact that broadened attention scope would reduce AB, but it may also be caused by the fact that both attention scope and AB vary with another variable. To further elucidate whether broadened attention scope would reduce AB, study in experimental design should be conducted. The current study fulfilled this aim.This hypothesis, i.e., broadened attention scope would reduce AB, relies on the overinvestment hypothesis, which proposes that the distractors enter the limited-capacity consolidation stage and interfere with the consolidation processing of the second target through competition and substitution masking, resulting in AB. The overinvestment hypothesis is challenged by the discovery of absence or reduction of the AB when the distractors between targets are replaced by other targets, a phenomenon referred to as the "spreading of sparing". As a result, it has been replaced by several new theories concerning the cause and nature of AB. Since the overinvestment hypothesis has been disproved by new discovery and replaced by new theory, we predict that the hypothesis, i.e., broadened attention scope would reduce AB, is not valid and the attention scope would not influence AB.The current study used the modified Navon's letter task to manipulate attention scope, the effectiveness of which has been proved in several previous studies. Moreover, previous studies demonstrated that a standard AB underlies AB in the categorical AB task, while both a standard AB and an amodal task switch contribute to AB in the probe AB task, suggesting that distinct processes underlying AB in the categorical and probe AB task, which are the two commonly applied AB paradigms. This indicates that attention scope may influence AB in these two kinds of tasks differently. Consequently, the current study investigated whether broadened attention scope would decrease AB in the probe AB task and categorical AB taskThe Experiment 1 aimed at investigating whether broadened attention scope would reduce AB in the probe AB task. Participants were randomly assigned to the broadened attention scope (AS) group, the neutral attention scope group, and the narrowed attention scope group. They then finished a modified version of Navon letter task (the ratio of global target trial is 0.2,0.5, and 0.8, respectively), which was used to induce corresponding attention scope. After this, they finished the categorical AB task. The results revealed that responses to global and local target trials were faster and slower, respectively, in narrowed AS group than broadened AS group. Responses to local target trials were faster in neutral AS group than broadened AS group, and faster in narrowed AS group than neutral AS group. This pattern of results demonstrates the validity of the manipulation of attention scope. Moreover, the interaction effect of attention scope and lag on second target identification accuracy is not significant. The Bayesian statistics further reveals that the results of the Experiment 1 don't support the theoretical hypothesis, i.e., broadened attention scope would decrease AB in the probe AB task, but instead support the null hypothesis, i.e., the attention scope does not influence AB in the probe AB task. Thus, the results of the Experiment 1 suggest that the attention scope does not influence AB in the probe AB task.The procedure of Experiment 2 is identical to Experiment 1, except that there is one more lag condition in the AB task, i.e., the second target can also appear at 900ms after the first target. The Experiment 2 aimed at investigating whether the results of Experiment 1 can be replicated and generalized when lag 9 condition is also included. Similar to Experiment 1, the results of Experiment 2 also demonstrate the validity of the manipulation of attention scope. Moreover, the interaction effect of attention scope and lag on second target identification accuracy is also not significant. The Bayesian statistics further reveals that the results of the Experiment 2 support the null hypothesis, i.e., the attention scope does not influence AB in the probe AB task. Thus, the results of the Experiment 2 suggests that even when lag 9 condition is also included, the attention scope does not influence AB in the probe AB task.The procedure of Experiment 3 is identical to Experiment 1, except that the probe AB task was replaced by a categorical AB task. The Experiment 3 aimed at investigating whether broadened attention scope would decrease AB in the categorical AB task. Similar to Experiment 1 and 2, the results of Experiment 3 also demonstrate the validity of the manipulation of attention scope. Moreover, the interaction effect of attention scope and lag on second target identification accuracy is also not significant. The Bayesian statistics further reveals that the results of the Experiment 3 support the null hypothesis, i.e., the attention scope does not influence AB in the probe AB task. Thus, the results of the Experiment 3 suggests that the attention scope does not influence AB in the probe AB taskIn conclusion, consistent with our prediction, the results of the current study clearly suggest that the attention scope does not influence AB. Thus, the negative correlation between attention scope and AB found in previous studies is caused by the fact that both of them vary with another variable. Moreover, the effect of affect on AB is not mediated by attention scope, but instead must have other underlying mechanisms.