Attentional awakening: gradual modulation of temporal attention in rapid serial visual presentation

Abstract

Orienting attention to a point in time facilitates processing of an item within rapidly changing surroundings. We used a one-target RSVP task to look for differences in accuracy in reporting a target related to when the target temporally appeared in the sequence. The results show that observers correctly report a target early in the sequence less frequently than later in the sequence. Previous RSVP studies predicted equivalently accurate performances for one target wherever it appeared in the sequence. We named this new phenomenon attentional awakening, which reflects a gradual modulation of temporal attention in a rapid sequence.

Attentional load inhibits vection

“…In the RSVP task (e.g., Ariga & Yokosawa, 2008;Mitchell, 1979), letters presented in the center of the screen change at a high frequency (i.e., 4 Hz). The participants' task is to identify or count the number of appearances of a target letter.…”

Attentional capture during attentional awakening

“…This gradual improvement, attentional awakening, has been explained in terms of the time required for the visual system to prepare attention for optimal distribution over the central stream. In the study by Ariga and Yokosawa (2008), observers adopted the singleton detection mode to detect an oddball item among nontargets of homogeneous color. With this procedure, it is possible that the time required for the singleton detection mode to become effective could cause attentional awakening.…”

“…We integrated four successive target positions into a subset (bin) before analyzing the data to increase power of the analysis, following Ariga and Yokosawa (2008). Thus, the identification scores for the target appearing in the sixth to ninth target frames were integrated into bin 1.…”

“…The present study focuses on the effects of time on attentional capture from the onset of a trial to the onset of a distractor. This question arises from the discovery that deployment of attention develops gradually after the start of a trial, even when the observers know the defining feature of the target in advance (Ariga & Yokosawa, 2008). This temporal deployment of attention suggests that attentional readiness develops over time.…”

“…In the present study, we combined attentional awakening (Ariga & Yokosawa, 2008) and attentional capture procedures (Folk et al, 2002;Leber & Egeth, 2006) to examine the impact of time on the selection of visual items by attentional set through the progress of a trial. To this end, we systematically manipulated the serial position of a target to measure attentional awakening, and the similarity of the target and distractors to measure attentional capture.…”