Abstract
We investigated whether a failure of distractor inhibition contributes to the magnitude of theattentional blink (AB). Subjects viewed dual-targetrapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams, where the distractors that directly preceded and succeeded Target 2 (T2−1, T2+1) were either identical to each other or different. Previously, Dux, Coltheart, and Harris (2006) found enhanced target report in RSVP due to repetition of distractors around Target 1, which was interpreted as evidence of distractor inhibition. Here, distractor repetition again attenuated the AB, but only at lag 2, the Target 2 position where T2−1 would have undergone attentive processing. Our results demonstrate that the distractor repetition effect is dependent on attention, and that a failure to inhibit distractors contributes to the AB.
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This research was funded by Grant DP0557590 from the Australian Research Council, and I.M.H. was supported by an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship.
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Dux, P.E., Harris, I.M. On the failure of distractor inhibition in the attentional blink. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14, 723–728 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196828
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196828