Capacity Limits of Attention

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Last updated 4:21 AM on 4/19/26
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12 Terms

1
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Key example of capacity limits of attention (1)

Attentional blink

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Attentional blink def

An inability to report a target stimulus if it appears to soon after another target stimulus

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Attentional blink elaboration mapped to specific stimuli + timings

When two targets (T1 and T2) are presented in rapid succession, the processing of T1 disrupts the processing of T2, so T2 is often missed if presented within 200-500 ms after T1

<p>When two targets (T1 and T2) are presented in rapid succession, the processing of T1 disrupts the processing of T2, so T2 is often missed if presented within 200-500 ms after T1</p>
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What is lag-1 sparing?

Lag 1 Sparing: If T2 appears immediately after T1 (approx. 100ms), it is often "spared" and detected correctly

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2 models to explain attentional blink

  • Bottleneck models

  • Biased competition models

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Bottleneck models description (1)

  • Suggests that sensory detection (stage 1) occurs in parallel (can sense many different things at once), but conscious awareness + working memory consolidation (stage 2), occur serially, resulting in ‘bottleneck’, where not all visual input can be processed to reach our conscious awareness

<ul><li><p>Suggests that <strong>sensory detection</strong> (stage 1) occurs in <strong>parallel</strong> (can sense many different things at once), but <strong>conscious awareness + working memory consolidation </strong>(stage 2), occur <strong>serially</strong>, resulting in ‘bottleneck’, where not all visual input can be processed to reach our conscious awareness</p></li></ul><p></p>
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Biased competition models description

Sees attention as an ‘emergent property’ to resolve many stimuli competing for neural attention

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Key differences in how T2 target was ‘lost’, based on bottleneck vs biased competition models (don’t need to memorise, just for your understanding)

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fMR findings related to attentional blink for early vs later processing

  • Attentional blink affects P300 (later processing related to WM consolidation)

  • Attentional blink doesn’t affect N1 or P1

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Implication/suggestion (1)

  • Attentional blink affects WM consolidation, but not sensory perception (i.e. the brain "sees" the missed stimulus but cannot consolidate it)

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fMRI resesarch on ‘missed’ targets’ (2) + implication (1)

  • Even when targets were 'missed’, there was still more PPA activity than when there was no stimulus at all

  • But this activity did not reach frontal areas

  • Indicates that the meaning of a stimulus can be represented without conscious awareness of that stimulus

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Which model do the 2 examples of fMRI research support? (1)

  • Bottleneck models → we ‘see’ lots of stimuli, but not all reach our conscious awareness