The Effect Of Visual Working Memory Consolidation On Attentional Blink

The rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm is classic in the study of temporal attention. The attentional blink (AB) is the marked difficulty of identifying the second (T2) of two briefly flashed, successive target stimuli if these follow each other within approximately500ms. A host of theories have attempted to explain the emergence of the attentional blink. However, many recent studies refute those explanations. For instance, researchers found that about5%populations have no attentional blink deficit. In addition, participants could effectively utilize cognitive resources under effective cognitive control to reduce the attentional blink.In order to further explore the effect of visual working memory in attentional blink, we examined the underlying mechanism of visual working memory consolidation (WMC) and the inter-stimulus internal (ISI) between T1and T2(T1-T2Lag) in the RSVP paradigm. In the first experiments, we adapted the masked change detection (MCD) paradigm, set up two levels of the processing in WMC:one letter and three letters in the processing of consolidation. The other independent variables were T1-T2Lag and the matching between letters in the working memory and Target1. The results of behavioral experiment showed that an increase in concurrent WMC load amplified the attentional blink. The two-way interaction of WMC load and T1-T2Lag was significant. In addition the interaction of WMC load and matching of Task1was also significant which suggested that the cognitive mechanism could be related to the sequential processing of WMC. To establish the locus of the attentional blink in time, the latency and amplitude of P2and P3component in response to T2targets were analyzed in experiment2. In the second experiment, we change the time of WMC, and the T1-T2Lag was set at two levels like experiment1. The correct ratio and reaction time (RT) of T2were influenced by the main effects of WMC time and T1-T2Lag. The interaction between WMC time and Lag was reliably affecting the RT of T2. The simple effect of Lag was significant at the100ms level of WMC time. The ERP results were consistent with the behavior results. During the attentional blink, the mean magnitude of P2and P3were smaller when T2embedded at Lag7, and the peak latency of P3was longer. When the WMC time was200ms, the amplitude of P2was larger in the condition of Lag7. When the WMC time was100ms, the peak latency of P3was longer during the attentional blink.The sequential processing of visual working memory consolidation could be the underlying cognitive mechanism of attentional blink. In addition, early attentional processing (as marked by the P2) was suppressed by increased involvement of working memory consolidation, a phenomenon not well predicted by many current theories of attentional blink. In the future, the theories of temporal attention should accommodate the idea about the effect of working memory consolidation and attention.