Abstract
When a rapid succession of auditory stimuli is listened to, processing of the second of two successive targets among fillers is often impaired, a phenomenon known as theattentional blink (AB). Three experiments were conducted to examine the role of filler items in modulating the size of the auditory AB, using a two-alternative forced choice discrimination paradigm. In the first experiment, dual-stream presentations in which low- and high-pitch items were separated by six semitones were tested. A transient deficit in reporting the probe was observed in the presence of fillers that was greater when fillers were in the same stream as the probe. In the absence of a filler, there was a residual deficit, but this was not related to the time lag between the target and the probe. In the second and third experiments, in which single-stream presentations were used, a typical AB was found in the presence of homogeneous fillers, but heterogeneous fillers tended to produce a greater deficit. In the absence of a filler, there was little or no evidence of a blink. The pattern of results suggests that other attentional and perceptual factors contribute to the blink.
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Parts of this research were reported at the Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) and the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Sciences (BBCS) joint meeting in July 2000 in Cambridge. This work was supported by a grant from the Fonds de recherche sur la nature et les technologies du Québec to S.T. Part of the research described here was conducted at the Cardiff School of Psychology’s Human Factor Laboratory and received financial support from the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council in the form of a grant to D.M.J. F.V. receives support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Tremblay, S., Vachon, F. & Jones, D.M. Attentional and perceptual sources of the auditory attentional blink. Perception & Psychophysics 67, 195–208 (2005). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206484
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206484