Attentional rhythm: a temporal analogue of object-based attention.

The underlying units of attention are often discrete visual objects. Perhaps the clearest form of evidence for this is the same-object advantage: Following a spatial cue, responses are faster to probes occurring on the same object than they are to probes occurring on other objects, while equating brute distance. Is this a fundamentally spatial effect, or can same-object advantages also occur in time? We explored this question using independently normed rhythmic temporal sequences, structured into phrases and presented either visually or auditorily. Detection was speeded when cues and probes both lay within the same rhythmic phrase, compared to when they spanned a phrase boundary, while equating brute duration. This same-phrase advantage suggests that object-based attention is a more general phenomenon than has been previously suspected: Perceptual structure constrains attention, in both space and time, and in both vision and audition.