Ronconi Luca, Pincham Hannah L, Szűcs Dénes, Facoetti Andrea
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Developmental and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Via Venezia 8, 35131, Padua, Italy.
Psychol Res. 2016 Sep;80(5):774-84. doi: 10.1007/s00426-015-0691-8. Epub 2015 Jul 28.
Our ability to allocate attention at different moments in time can sometimes fail to select stimuli occurring in close succession, preventing visual information from reaching awareness. This so-called attentional blink (AB) occurs when the second of two targets (T2) is presented closely after the first (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). We hypothesized that entrainment to a rhythmic stream of stimuli-before visual targets appear-would reduce the AB. Experiment 1 tested the effect of auditory entrainment by presenting sounds with a regular or irregular interstimulus interval prior to a RSVP where T1 and T2 were separated by three possible lags (1, 3 and 8). Experiment 2 examined visual entrainment by presenting visual stimuli in place of auditory stimuli. Results revealed that irrespective of sensory modality, arrhythmic stimuli preceding the RSVP triggered an alerting effect that improved the T2 identification at lag 1, but impaired the recovery from the AB at lag 8. Importantly, only auditory rhythmic entrainment was effective in reducing the AB at lag 3. Our findings demonstrate that manipulating the pre-stimulus condition can reduce deficits in temporal attention characterizing the human cognitive architecture, suggesting innovative trainings for acquired and neurodevelopmental disorders.
我们在不同时刻分配注意力的能力有时会无法选择相继出现的刺激，从而阻止视觉信息进入意识。当在快速序列视觉呈现（RSVP）中，两个目标中的第二个目标（T2）紧跟在第一个目标（T1）之后呈现时，就会出现这种所谓的注意瞬脱（AB）现象。我们假设，在视觉目标出现之前，使大脑与有节奏的刺激流同步，会减少注意瞬脱。实验1通过在RSVP之前呈现具有规则或不规则刺激间隔的声音来测试听觉同步的效果，其中T1和T2之间有三种可能的时间间隔（1、3和8）。实验2通过呈现视觉刺激代替听觉刺激来研究视觉同步。结果显示，无论感觉模态如何，RSVP之前的无节奏刺激都会引发一种警觉效应，这种效应在时间间隔为1时改善了T2的识别，但在时间间隔为8时损害了从注意瞬脱中的恢复。重要的是，只有听觉节奏同步在时间间隔为3时有效地减少了注意瞬脱。我们的研究结果表明，操纵刺激前的条件可以减少表征人类认知结构的时间注意缺陷，这为后天性和神经发育障碍提出了创新性训练方法。
