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Updated: May 28, 2026

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets
Published on: December 5, 2014
Is the emotional modulation of the attentional blink driven by response bias?
Helen Tibboel1, Bram Van Bockstaele, Jan De Houwer
1Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. helen.tibboel@ugent.be
Abstract:
Several studies have shown that the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992) is diminished for highly arousing T2 stimuli (e.g., Anderson, 2005). Whereas this effect is most often interpreted as evidence for a more efficient processing of arousing information, it could be due also to a bias to report more arousing stimuli than neutral stimuli. We introduce a paradigm that allows one to control for such a response bias. Using this paradigm, we obtained evidence that the diminished AB for taboo words cannot be explained by a response bias. This supports the idea that the emotional modulation of the AB is caused by attentional processes.
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