Visual search is postponed during the period of the AB: An event‐related potential study

Abstract

(2015) 'Visual search is postponed during the period of the AB : an event-related potential study. ', Psychophysiology., 52 (8). pp. 1031-1038.Further information on publisher's website:https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12435Publisher's copyright statement: This is the accepted version of the following article: Lagroix, H. E. P., Grubert, A., Spalek, T. M., Di Lollo, V. and Eimer, M. (2015), Visual search is postponed during the period of the AB: An event-related potential study. Psychophysiology, 52(8): 1031-1038, which has been published in nal form at https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.12435. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractIn the phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB), perception of the second of two rapidly sequential targets (T2) is impaired when presented shortly after the first (T1). Studies in which T2 consisted of a pop-out search array provided evidence suggesting that visual search is postponed during the AB. In the present work, we used behavioural and electrophysiological measures to test this postponement hypothesis. The behavioural measure was reaction time (RT) to T2; the electrophysiological measure was the onset latency of an event-related-potential index of attentional selection, known as the N2pc. Consistent with the postponement hypothesis, both measures were delayed during the AB. The delay in N2pc was substantially shorter than that in RT, pointing to multiple sources of delay in the chain of processing events, as distinct from the single source postulated in current theories of the AB. Finally, the finding that the N2pc was delayed during the AB strongly suggests that attention is involved in the processing of pop-out search arrays. Search postponement during the AB 3The human visual system is severely limited in its ability to process rapidly-changing visual stimuli. This limitation has been studied with a phenomenon called the attentional blink (AB) in which perception of the second of two targets is impaired when the temporal lag between them is shorter than about 500 ms (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). Accounts of the AB differ, but it is generally agreed that the second-target deficit occurs because of attentional constraints arising from the requirement to process the first target.In the conventional AB paradigm, two targets (T1 and T2; e.g., two letters) are inserted in a stream of distractors (e.g., digits) displayed in rapi...

Dissociating between the N2pc and attentional shifting: An attentional blink study

“…In contrast, the boost-and-bounce and eSTST models suggest that during the blink, inhibitory processes bring activation below baseline levels, such that the onset of attentional engagement is unaffected, but the maximal enhancement generated by T2 is weaker. Building on our conclusion that the N2pc can be used as a proxy of attentional engagement, our results support an intermediary position between these accounts: since the onset of the N2pc was delayed and the N2pc amplitude attenuated, we conclude that attentional engagement is both delayed (by approximately 20-30ms, see also Lagroix et al, 2015) and suppressed during the blink.…”

“…On the one hand, we found that the attentional blink did not modulate the location benefit produced by a spatial cue (thus replicating Bae et al, 2018;Ghorashi et al, 2009a;2009b;2010;Zivony & Lamy, 2016). On the other hand, we found the AB to reduce the likelihood of identifying the distractor letter inside this cue (as indicated by the smaller response-compatibility effect observed during the blink) and to both delay the onset (see also, Lagroix et al, 2015) and reduce the amplitude (see also, e.g., Dell'Acqua et al, 2006;Jolicoeur et al, 2006a) of the N2pc component. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the N2pc does not reflect attentional shifting (which, unlike the N2pc, is unaffected by the blink) but processes that occur downstream from attentional shifting (e.g., identification, see also Foster et al, 2018;.…”

“…The N2pc is typically observed between 150 and 300ms post-stimulus (see Luck, 2012, for review), with different time windows used in different studies. In order to define the appropriate time window in this study, while taking into account for the possibility that the AB may delay the onset of the N2pc (Lagroix, Grubert, Spalek, Di Lollo & Eimer, 2015), we first measured the N2pc's onset, defined as the 15% fractional peak latency of the negative deflection in the 150-350ms time window, for each combination of T1-cue and cue-T2 lag for each participant. We then conducted an ANOVA with T1-cue lag (lag 2 vs. lag 7) and cue-T2 lag (lag 1 vs. lag 6) as independent variables and N2pc onset as the dependent variable.…”

Enhanced frontal activation underlies sparing from the attentional blink: Evidence from human electrophysiology

“…There is reasonable agreement on the role of the dorso-and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices in the generation of P3a (e.g., Ranganath & Rainer, 2003). Indeed, these current results are in broad agreement with evidence indicating the involvement of the frontoparietal network in enabling attentional selection of task-relevant information, both when displayed simultaneously with arrays of spatially distributed distracting information (Corbetta, 1998;Todd & Marois, 2004;Xu & Chun, 2006;Yantis et al, 2002) and when embedded in a spatially overlapping, but temporally distributed, sequence of distracting events (Dell'Acqua, Sessa, Jolicoeur, & Robitaille, 2006;Husain, Shapiro, Martin, & Kennard, 1997;Joseph, Chun, & Nakayama, 1997;Lagroix, Grubert, Spalek, Di Lollo, & Eimer, 2015;Marcantoni, Lepage, Beaudoin, Bourgouin, & Richer, 2003;Marois, Chun, & Gore, 2000). There is also good agreement that more posterior regions, including the temporoparietal junction and inferotemporal cortices, are likely involved in the generation of P3b (e.g., Polich, 2003Polich, , 2007.…”

Deployment of spatial attention to a structural framework: exogenous (alerting) and endogenous (goal-directed) factors

“…Observers were required to make a speeded response to T2, and then identify T1 at leisure. RT has been used as the response measure in earlier studies of the AB (e.g., Jolicoeur & Dell'Acqua, 1998;Lagroix, Grubert, Spalek, Di Lollo, & Eimer, 2015;Zuvic, Visser, & Di Lollo, 2000) for two main reasons. First, RT is free from possible confounds arising from response-ceiling constraints inherent in the 100% limit of the accuracy scale (e.g., Ghorashi, Enns, Spalek, & Di Lollo, 2009).…”