Abstract:

When a target in a rapid (11 items/s) series of visual items is attended, the perception of a subsequent probe is impaired if the probe occurs within 500 ms. If this attentional blink (AB) reflects central processing limitations, then an AB should be found using auditory stimuli. Existing investigations, however, have used compressed speech stimuli, namely spoken letter or digit names. Because these stimuli are susceptible to visual recoding, the possibility that the AB reflects a vision-specific bottleneck cannot yet be dismissed. To redress this problem, pure tones were used in place of compressed speech stimuli. Participants heard rapid auditory streams comprising 20 tones ranging in frequency from 1000 to 2500 Hz. All tones were 50 dB except the target and probe, which were more intense on independent random halves of the trials. Participants detected the loud target and then detected whether the stream contained a second loud tone. Preliminary results show an auditory AB. The AB appears to reflect general, modality-independent limitations. Future work will examine the relationship between the visual, compressed speech, and pure tone ABs. If the AB reflects central limitations, the magnitudes of the three ABs should correlate positively. [Work supported by NSERC.]