The Attentional Blink at 20 items/sec, Model Prediction and Empirical Validation of Lag-2 Sparing

The Attentional Blink (AB) paradigm uses a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) stream, with two targets (denoted T1 and T2). There is a period of approximately 500 msec during which processing of T1 seems to impair the ability to detect and report T2 (Raymond, Shapiro and Amell 1992). This suggests that the deployment of attention to processing T1 has a temporal window of a little over half a second. This interpretation is complicated by lag 1 sparing, which is the robust finding of almost unimpaired performance on T2 when it immediately follows T1.