Erroneous selection of a non-target item improves subsequent target identification in rapid serial visual presentations

Yamada Yuki

Ariga Atsunori

Miura Kayo

Kawabe Takahiro

Advances in Cognitive Psychology

The second of two targets (T2) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVSVP) is often missed even though the first (T1) is correctly reported (attentional blink). The rate of correct T2 identification is quite high, however, when T2 comes immediately after T1 (lag-1 sparing). This study investigated whether and how non-target items induce lag-1 sparing. One T1 and two T2s comprising letters were inserted in distractors comprising symbols in each of two synchronised RSVSVPs. A digit (dummy) was presented with T1 in another stream. Lag-1 sparing occurred even at the location where the dummy was present (Experiment 1). This distractor-induced sparing effect was also obtained even when a Japanese katakana character (Experiment 2) was used as the dummy. The sparing effect was, however, severely weakened when symbols (Experiment 3) and Hebrew letters (Experiment 4) served as the dummy. Our findings suggest a tentative hypothesis that attentional set for item nameability is meta-categorically created and adopted to the dummy only when the dummy is nameable.

attentional blink

RSVSVP

category

attentional set

lag-1 sparing

eng

University of Finance and Management in Warsaw

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[ISSN] 1895-1171

[PMID] 20859463

[URI] http://www.ac-psych.org/en/home