The attentional blink: Then and now

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the outcome where in a rapidly presented stream of stimuli observers are unable to successfully report the second of two previously defined targets relative to an otherwise identical control condition where the first target does not require report. The first AB article was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance in 1992 and in the ensuing 32 years has garnered the interest of many researchers spanning multiple disciplines and experimental approaches, both basic and applied. Moreover, it has attracted the attention of a variety of social media whose authors have appropriately and in some cases inappropriately used the AB to account for human behavior. Perhaps one of the most important outcomes of this research has been to shift the focus from the study of spatial attention to include that of attention over time, or temporal attention. Given the upcoming 50th anniversary of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, the journal has asked the original authors to reflect on the history of attentional blink research. We wish to acknowledge that such reflection must be bounded by space and time (pun intended) limitations so apologies to those authors whose undoubtedly important research we were unable to cover. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).