ATTENTION TO VISUAL-PATTERN INFORMATION PRODUCES THE ATTENTIONAL BLINK IN RAPID SERIAL VISUAL PRESENTATION

To investigate the temporal allocation of attention, a series of 7 exp eriments using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) was designed to examine the relationship of the attentional demands of various target tasks to the production of the subsequent visual attentional deficit, or ''attentional blink'' (AB), recently reported by J. E. Raymond, K. L. Shapiro, and K. M. Arnell (1992). The principal finding is that AB occurs only when a target is an object and does not occur when the ta rget is defined by a temporal interval. Target detection difficulty as estimated by d' analysis reveals no relationship between the attentio nal demands of the target and the production of the AB. A late-selecti on account of this phenomenon is offered in place of the early-selecti on account advanced in Raymond et al.'s previous report.