Dividing attention between two different categories and locations in rapid serial visual presentations

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Visual Attention

Background:

• The attentional blink (AB) phenomenon impairs perception of a second target in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) when intertarget lags are short.
• Current theories attribute AB to temporal limitations in attentional resources.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether high-capacity visual attention involves concurrent monitoring of multiple locations or rapid attentional shifts.
• To examine the spatial capacity of visual attention under RSVP conditions.

Main Methods:

• Six experiments were conducted using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams.
• Participants monitored two noncontiguous spatial locations for targets among distractors.
• Targets and distractors varied across categories, including digits, letters, and pseudocharacters.

Main Results:

• Observers successfully monitored two noncontiguous locations concurrently, even with varied target and distractor categories.
• Performance indicated a capacity for simultaneous spatial monitoring, contradicting purely temporal explanations of attentional limitations.

Conclusions:

• Visual attention possesses a greater spatial capacity than previously suggested by attentional blink models.
• A modified input-filtering model, allowing flexible, multidimensional attentional sets across locations, can explain these findings.