Attentional blink and concealed information test

A pre-registered study

Abstract

Concealed information test (CIT) detects memory by presenting multiple question items and comparing the responses to the specific item with others items. We examined the availability of CIT using the attentional blink (AB) task. AB is known as the phenomenon that when monitoring the rapid serial visual presentation of stimuli containing two targets (T1 and T2), observers often miss T2, which appears at short intervals after the T1 onset. Our pilot study showed that the accuracy of detecting T2 decreased when T1 was crime-relevant compared to when it was crime-irrelevant. Here, we conducted three pre-registered online experiments to investigate the effect of T1 being crime-relevant on AB; however, no results were obtained to support the hypothesis. Further research is needed to consider factors that evoke stronger crime-related memories.