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Updated: May 25, 2026
A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets
Published on: December 5, 2014
Deficits in selective attention in symptomatic Huntington disease: assessment using an attentional blink paradigm
Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis1, Maree Farrow, Michelle Wilson-Ching
1Experimental Neuropsychology Research Unit, School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia. nellie.georgiou-karistianis@monash.edu
Insights
Huntington disease (HD) patients show impaired selective attention, making it harder to identify targets in rapid visual tasks. This attentional blink deficit worsens with disease progression, impacting cognitive control.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neurology
Background:
- Huntington disease (HD) is associated with impaired selective attention.
- Difficulty identifying targets among distractors is a key symptom in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tasks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate attentional control deficits in symptomatic Huntington disease (HD) using an attentional blink (AB) paradigm.
- To assess the impact of HD on the ability to identify targets in RSVP tasks.
Main Methods:
- Employed an attentional blink (AB) paradigm with 14 HD patients and 13 healthy controls.
- Participants performed an RSVP task, identifying two targets (T1 and T2) amidst distractors.
- Measured T1 identification accuracy and the AB effect (impaired T2 detection after T1).
Main Results:
- HD patients exhibited significantly impaired T1 identification accuracy.
- A significantly larger attentional blink (AB) was observed in HD patients, indicating reduced T2 detection.
- HD patients made more random errors compared to controls.
Conclusions:
- Frontostriatal or frontoparietal dysfunction in HD compromises attentional control, hindering target detection, especially with increased task difficulty.
- Progressive frontoparietal cortical changes in manifest HD significantly impair attentional control mechanisms, unlike in presymptomatic stages.
Background:
Impaired selective attention in Huntington disease (HD) may manifest as difficulty in identifying a single target embedded among a series of distractors in rapid serial visual presentation tasks.
Method:
We used an attentional blink (AB) paradigm to examine whether attentional control is impaired in symptomatic HD. Fourteen HD patients and 13 age-matched healthy controls performed a rapid serial visual presentation task in which 2 targets (T1 and T2) and numerous distractors were presented in rapid succession. We assessed the accuracy of T1 identification and the AB (impaired T2 detection after the correct identification of T1).
Results:
Among the HD patients, identification of T1 was significantly impaired and AB was significantly larger but not longer. The HD patients also made significantly more random errors.
Conclusions:
Frontostriatal or frontoparietal dysfunction is likely to compromise attentional control in HD, such that well-masked and rapidly presented target stimuli are difficult to detect and identify, especially as the difficulty level increases. Although we previously reported no AB deficits in presymptomatic HD, with manifest disease we found that the progressive frontoparietal cortical changes compromise attentional control mechanisms.
