PRIMING FROM THE ATTENTIONAL BLINK - A FAILURE TO EXTRACT VISUAL TOKENS BUT NOT VISUAL TYPES

When people must detect several targets in a very rapid stream of succ essive visual events at the same location, detection of an initial tar get induces misses for subsequent targets within a brief period. This attentional blink may serve to prevent interruption of ongoing target processing by temporarily suppressing vision for subsequent stimuli. W e examined the level at which the internal blink operates, specificall y, whether it prevents early visual processing or prevents guile subst antial processing from reaching awareness. Our data support the latter view. We observed priming from missed letter targets, benefiting dete ction of a subsequent target with the same identity but a different ca se. In a second study, We observed semantic priming from word targets that were missed during the blink. These results demonstrate that atte ntional gating within the blink operates only after substantial stimul us processing has already taken place. The results are discussed in te rms of two forms of visual representation, namely, types and tokens.