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A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets
Published on: December 5, 2014
Seeing the light: Adapting luminance reveals low-level visual processes in the attentional blink
Barry Giesbrecht1, Walter F Bischof, Alan Kingstone
1Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA. giesbrecht@ucdavis.edu
Abstract:
It is widely assumed that high-level visual processes subserve the attentional blink (AB). Recent evidence from studies of visual masking during the AB that were designed to directly test the contributions of high-level masking effects, however, have failed to provide empirical support for this position. The implication is that low-level visual processes are crucial to the AB. We tested this idea by manipulating adapting luminance in a standard AB paradigm. Consistent with the involvement of low-level neural mechanisms, the AB effect interacted with adapting luminance such that an AB was revealed only under photopic (light adapted) viewing conditions.
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