Attentional Blink: Resource depletion vs. selection

Abstract

Cognitive psychologists have likened attention to a limited resource or capacity to account for recognition performances under dual task circumstances. Some theorists use this analogy of limited resource to account for the attentional blink phenomenon, in which perception of the second of two targets embedded in a rapid stream of nontargets is impaired; they argue that the attentional blink reflects scarcity of available resource for the first target due to the resource depletion by the first target processing. Some other theorists propose an alternative explanation in which the attentional blink results from on-line selection mechanisms that act in response to distracting input, rather than being the result of first-target-induced cognitive resource depletion. The present article reviews recent arguments between these theories and introduces some new findings suggesting that selection mechanisms involved in filtering for targets provide a strong and coherent explanation of the attentional blink.