Attentional blink and selection in the tactile domain

Abstract

Brief tactile presses stimulated the index and middle fingers of the right and left hands. The stimulation on each hand consisted of a triplet of presses. Each triplet was composed of a brief press to one finger (e.g., the middle finger), followed by a brief press to the other finger (e.g., the index finger), and by a final simultaneous press to both fingers of a given hand. With equal probability, a triplet could begin with the index or middle finger, and either 360 ms or 800 ms later another triplet stimulated fingers on the other hand. The task was to indicate which finger was stimulated first in each triplet. In four experiments, response accuracy to the second triplet revealed an attentional blink in taction, that is, responses were less accurate at the short triplet–triplet interval than at the long triplet–triplet interval. This effect was substantially reduced when the first triplet could be ignored.

This research was supported by a FIRB grant from the Italian Government awarded to RDA and a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada awarded to PJ.

This research was supported by a FIRB grant from the Italian Government awarded to RDA and a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada awarded to PJ.

Acknowledgments

We thank Stefano Massaccesi, engineer at Department of General Psychology at University of Padova, for designing the tactile stimulators and their interface to the stimulation computer.

Notes

This research was supported by a FIRB grant from the Italian Government awarded to RDA and a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada awarded to PJ.