Citation

Asplund CL, Todd JJ, Snyder AP, Gilbert CM, Marois R. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 2010; 36(6): 1372-1381.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/a0020551

PMID

20919779

PMCID

PMC2998593

Abstract

The cost of attending to a visual event can be the failure to consciously detect other events. This processing limitation is well illustrated by the attentional blink paradigm, in which searching for and attending to a target presented in a rapid serial visual presentation stream of distractors can impair one's ability to detect a second target presented soon thereafter. The attentional blink critically depends on 'top-down' attentional settings, for it does not occur if participants are asked to ignore the first target. Here we show that 'bottom-up' attention can also lead to a profound but ephemeral deficit in conscious perception: Presentation of a novel, unexpected, and task-irrelevant stimulus virtually abolishes conscious detection of a target presented within half a second after the 'Surprise' stimulus, but only for its earliest occurrences (generally 1 to 2 presentations). This powerful but short-lived deficit contrasts with a milder but more enduring form of attentional capture that accompanies singleton presentations in rapid serial visual presentations. We conclude that the capture of stimulus-driven attention alone can limit explicit perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en