Olivers Christian N L, Van der Burg Erik
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Brain Res. 2008 Nov 25;1242:191-9. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2008.01.070. Epub 2008 Feb 8.
The second of two targets (T2) presented in a rapid visual stream is often missed when presented shortly after the first (T1). This phenomenon has been referred to as the attentional blink. Here we show that the presentation of a synchronous sound enables T2 to escape the attentional blink, to the extent that performance was back at the level of T1. The sound also improved T1 identification, with little evidence for a trade-off between T1 and T2. Improvements were also found even if the sounds coincided with distractors on 82% of the trials, suggesting an automatic component. Sounds that preceded the targets had little to no effect on T2, suggesting that the enhancement was not due to alerting. These findings replicate and extend earlier work on audition-driven perceptual enhancement of single visual targets. They also have implications for theories of the attentional blink.
在快速视觉流中呈现的两个目标中的第二个目标（T2），若在第一个目标（T1）之后不久呈现，往往会被错过。这种现象被称为注意瞬脱。在此我们表明，同步声音的呈现能使T2避开注意瞬脱，其表现恢复到T1的水平。该声音还改善了T1的识别，几乎没有证据表明T1和T2之间存在权衡。即便在82%的试验中声音与干扰物同时出现，仍发现有改善，这表明存在自动成分。先于目标出现的声音对T2几乎没有影响，这表明这种增强并非由警觉引起。这些发现重复并扩展了早期关于听觉驱动的单个视觉目标感知增强的研究。它们对注意瞬脱理论也具有启示意义。
