Pupil Dilation: A Fingerprint of Temporal Selection During the “Attentional Blink”

Abstract

Pupil dilation indexes cognitive events of behavioral relevance, like the storage of information to memory and the deployment of attention. Yet, given the slow temporal response of the pupil dilation, it is not known from previous studies whether the pupil can index cognitive events in the short time scale of ∼100 ms. Here we measured the size of the pupil in the Attentional Blink (AB) experiment, a classic demonstration of attentional limitations in processing rapidly presented stimuli. In the AB, two targets embedded in a sequence have to be reported and the second stimulus is often missed if presented between 200 and 500 ms after the first. We show that pupil dilation can be used as a marker of cognitive processing in AB, revealing both the timing and amount of cognitive processing. Specifically, we found that in the time range where the AB is known to occur: (i) the pupil dilation was delayed, mimicking the pattern of response times in the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm, (ii) the amplitude of the pupil was reduced relative to that of larger lags, even for correctly identified targets, and (iii) the amplitude of the pupil was smaller for missed than for correctly reported targets. These results support two-stage theories of the Attentional Blink where a second processing stage is delayed inside the interference regime, and indicate that the pupil dilation can be used as a marker of cognitive processing in the time scale of ∼100 ms. Furthermore, given the known relation between the pupil dilation and the activity of the locus coeruleus, our results also support theories that link the serial stage to the action of a specific neuromodulator, norepinephrine.

Pupil size tracks perceptual content and surprise

“…It has long been known that the diameter of one's pupil changes during cognitive acts (Hess & Polt, 1964;Kahneman & Beatty, 1966). Specifically, the pupil dilates when subjects engage in cognitive tasks, independent of the level of retinal illumination (Einhauser et al, 2010;Preuschoff et al, 2011;Fiedler & Glockner, 2012;Wierda et al, 2012;Zylberberg et al, 2012;Shalom et al, 2013;de Gee et al, 2014). These pupil responses are associated with changes in the gain of neural interactions in the cerebral cortex (Eldar et al, 2013;Reimer et al, 2014).…”

The beneficial effects of meditation: contribution of the anterior cingulate and locus coeruleus

“…The P300 event-related potential (ERP) is thought to index AC activated LC phasic burst responses to stimuli (Murphy et al, 2011) and the LC is hypothesized to play a role in mediating the attentional blink (Nieuwenhuis et al, 2005b) as well as the accompanying pupil dilations (Zylberberg et al, 2012). …”

When order matters: Last-come first-served effect in sequential arithmetic operations

“…Neuronal correlates of delayed processing and refractory periods after task-relevant stimuli have been found through EEG, MEG and time-resolved fMRI, and even in the¯ne-grained analysis of the pupillary response (Sigman & Dehaene, 2008;Clearwater et al, 2009;Marti, Sigman & Dehaene, 2011;Zylberberg, Oliva & Sigman, 2012). However, robust departures from strict seriality have been repeatedly found.…”