Comparing the Time Courses of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Attention in the Temporal Domain

Date

2019-12

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Abstract

Attention shifts within and between time and space frequently during our everyday life. Attention can be controlled both voluntarily and involuntarily and the brain must choose which stimuli are most relevant to process. It is known that this shift in attentional control is costly for the brain in terms of time and resources. In comparison to the well-studied spatial attention, the time courses of top-down (voluntary) and bottom-up (involuntary) temporal attention are less well-known. We examined both top-down and bottom-up attention using the attentional blink and emotion-induced blindness paradigms respectively in order to better understand whether the hallmarks of top-down/bottom-up distinctions in spatial attentional control also occur in temporal attentional control. Participants searched rapid serial visual presentation streams for either two targets or one target following an emotional distractor image. The results showed that participants demonstrated an AB effect, but most likely failed to notice the emotional distractor images and therefore did not show an EIB effect. Due to the lack of the AB-like effect in the EIB condition, this study remains inconclusive as the data in the bottom-up attentional control (EIB) condition were not interpretable.

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Keywords

Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Attention, Attentional Blink, Emotion-Induced Blindness

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