Abstract
Two experiments examined the possibility that attention directed to a distractor during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) can produce an attentional blink (AB). A to-be-ignored distractor (D1) preceded a target word (T2) by a variable lag in RSVP streams of black false-font distractors. D1 was highlighted by color and was a word, a string of consonants, a string of digits, or a string of false-font characters. Recall of T2 was significantly suppressed at short D1-T2 lags (the AB) but only when D1 contained letters; the AB was completely absent when D1 was composed of digits or false-font characters. Thus, the AB can be triggered by a highlighted distractor if the distractor shares features with a target.
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Experiments 1 and 2 were summarized at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Kansas City, MO, November 2002.
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Maki, W.S., Mebane, M.W. Attentional capture triggers an attentional blink. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 13, 125–131 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193823
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193823