Abstract
When two targets are embedded in a temporal stream of distractors, second-target identification is initially impaired and then gradually improves as intertarget interval lengthens (attentional blink; AB). According to bottleneck models of the AB, difficulty of first-target processing should modulate the magnitude of the second-target deficit. To test this, we examined whether a data-limited manipulation of T1 difficulty (forward masking) would modulate AB magnitude. In two experiments, we show that data-limited manipulations of T1 difficulty do affect the AB, so long as T1 is not masked by an immediately trailing distractor. When such a trailing item is present, the relationship between T1 difficulty and the AB disappears.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 102-108 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology |
Volume | 61 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2007 |
Externally published | Yes |