Spatial and temporal factors in the attentional blink

Task-irrelevant visual motion and flicker attenuate the attentional blink

“…Consistent with our hypothesis that the present (effective) background conditions cause a decreased attentional allocation to the first target, Crebolder and Ostaniewicz (2001) found that, when participants were presented with a three-target AB task, there was a significantly reduced AB to the second target, even though this second target, when presented as part of a traditional two-target AB task, revealed the typical AB outcome. Perhaps the knowledge of the third target task motivated participants to reserve attentional allocation to the first target, with an outcome consistent with that found in the present report.…”