Attention blinks for selection, not perception or memory: reading sentences and reporting targets.

In whole report, a sentence presented sequentially at the rate of about 10 words/s can be recalled accurately, whereas if the task is to report only two target words (e.g., red words), the second target suffers an attentional blink if it appears shortly after the first target.

Picture detection in rapid serial visual presentation: features or identity?

A pictured object can be readily detected in a rapid serial visual presentation sequence when the target is specified by a superordinate category name such as animal or vehicle. Are category features the initial basis for detection, with identification of the specific object occurring in a second stage (Evans & Treisman, 2005), or is identification of the object the basis for detection? When 2 targets in the same superordinate category are presented successively (lag 1), only the identification-first hypothesis predicts lag 1 sparing of the second target. The results of 2 experiments with novel pictures and a wide range of categories supported the identification-first hypothesis and a transient-attention model of lag 1 sparing and the attentional blink (Wyble, Bowman, & Potter, 2009).