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Two faces of perceptual awareness during the attentional blink: Gradual and discrete

View ORCID ProfileAytaç Karabay, View ORCID ProfileSophia A. Wilhelm, View ORCID ProfileJoost de Jong, Jing Wang, View ORCID ProfileSander Martens, View ORCID ProfileElkan G. Akyürek
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/769083
Aytaç Karabay
1Department of Psychology, Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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Sophia A. Wilhelm
1Department of Psychology, Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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Joost de Jong
1Department of Psychology, Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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Jing Wang
2Brain Function and Psychological Science Research Center, Shenzhen University, China
3Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
4Department of Biomedical Sciences of Cells & Systems, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands
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Sander Martens
3Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
4Department of Biomedical Sciences of Cells & Systems, University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands
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Elkan G. Akyürek
1Department of Psychology, Experimental Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
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  • For correspondence: e.g.akyurek@rug.nl
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Abstract

In a series of experiments, the nature of perceptual awareness during the attentional blink was investigated. Previous work has considered the attentional blink as a discrete, all-or-none phenomenon, indicative of general access to conscious awareness. Using continuous report measures in combination with mixture modeling, the outcomes showed that perceptual awareness during the attentional blink can be a gradual phenomenon. Awareness was not exclusively discrete, but also exhibited a gradual characteristic whenever the spatial extent of attention induced by the first target spanned more than a single location. Under these circumstances, mental representations of blinked targets were impoverished, but did approach the actual identities of the targets. Conversely, when the focus of attention covered only a single location, there was no evidence for any partial knowledge of blinked targets. These two different faces of awareness during the attentional blink challenge current theories of both awareness and temporal attention, which cannot explain the existence of gradual awareness of targets during the attentional blink. To account for the current outcomes, an adaptive gating model is proposed that casts awareness on a continuum between gradual and discrete, rather than as being of either single kind.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 12, 2021.
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Two faces of perceptual awareness during the attentional blink: Gradual and discrete
Aytaç Karabay, Sophia A. Wilhelm, Joost de Jong, Jing Wang, Sander Martens, Elkan G. Akyürek
bioRxiv 769083; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/769083
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Two faces of perceptual awareness during the attentional blink: Gradual and discrete
Aytaç Karabay, Sophia A. Wilhelm, Joost de Jong, Jing Wang, Sander Martens, Elkan G. Akyürek
bioRxiv 769083; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/769083

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