The attentional blink (AB) is a well-established paradigm in which identification of a target T2 is reduced shortly after presentation of an earlier target T1. An important question concerns the importance of backward masking during the AB. While task switching has been found to be a strong modulator mediating the AB without any masking of T2, the present study investigated whether spatial swit...

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the finding that the perception of the second of two targets (T2) is impaired when presented in close temporal proximity to the first target (T1). An exception to this deficit occurs when T2 immediately follows T1, an effect referred to as lag 1 sparing. So far, it has been unclear whether the AB is location specific or nonspatial in nature. Most demonstrati...

Various kinds of observations show that the ability of human beings to both consciously relive past events - episodic memory - and conceive future events, entails an active process of construction. This construction process also underpins many other important aspects of conscious human life, such as perceptions, language, and conscious thinking. This article provides an explanation of what make...

Attentional networks that integrate many cortical and subcortical elements dynamically control mental processes to focus on specific events and make a decision. The resources of attentional processing are finite. Nevertheless, we often face situations in which it is necessary to simultaneously process several modalities, for example, to switch attention between players in a soccer field. Here w...

A large body of evidence supports that visual attention - the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a salient or task-relevant subset of visual information - often works on object-based representation. Recent studies have postulated two possible accounts for the object-specific attentional advantage: attentional spreading and attentional prioritization, each of which modulates a bot...

We examined the hypothesis that rejection automatically elicits defensive physiological reactions in people with low self-esteem (SE) but that attentional control moderates this effect. Undergraduates (N= 67) completed questionnaire measures of SE and attentional control. Their eye-blink responses to startle probes were measured while they viewed paintings related to rejection and acceptance th...

Identification of a second target is often impaired by the requirement to process a prior target in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). This is termed the attentional blink. Even when the first target is task irrelevant an attentional blink may occur providing this first target shares similar features with the second target (contingent capture). An RSVP experiment was undertaken to asses...

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the finding that performance on the second of two targets (T1 and T2) in a rapidly presented stimulus stream is impaired when the targets are presented within 200-500 ms. This study investigates whether a negative attentional set, a form of top-down control, has an additional detrimental effect, and whether its influence is modulated by task demands. A negat...

In the phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB), perception of the second of two rapidly sequential targets (T2) is impaired when presented shortly after the first (T1). Studies in which T2 consisted of a pop-out search array provided evidence suggesting that visual search is postponed during the AB. In the present work, we used behavioral and electrophysiological measures to test this po...