Information processing in the first half second of vision

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In the next five years, I plan to work in three related areas having to do with information processing events that take place within the first half second of vision. 1. The attentional blink.  When two targets (T1 and T2) are displayed in rapid succession, accuracy is nearly perfect for T1 but substantially reduced for T2 (attentional blink, AB).  I plan to investigate four related aspects of the AB.  First, I plan to test differential predictions from two models: Temporary Loss of Control (TLC) and Delayed Attentional Engagement (DAE).  This will be done by differential cuing of T2.  Second, I plan to find out whether the input filter postulated in the TLC model can be set optimally for more than one stimulus attribute.  In this project, I plan to follow up the results of a pilot study which revealed an unanticipated attenuation of the AB when the two targets belonged to different categories.  Third, I will ask whether the TLC input filter is designed to merely ignore distractors or to actively reject them.  Finally, I plan to pursue a question arising from a survey to the AB literature: why is it that the phenomenon of Lag-1 sparing (in which perception of T2 is unimpaired if it is presented directly after T1) is never obtained with reaction time as the dependent measure.  The outcome of a pilot study implicates the presence of a mask after T2 as the critical factor; but the systematic work remains to be done. 2.  Temporal integration and the dynamics of perceptual object formation.  I plan to use a well-known paradigm of temporal integration of sequential displays to study the temporal dynamics of perceptual object formation.  Does an existing object interfere with the formation of a new perceptual object? 3. Wrapping up my earlier work on inhibition of return (IOR).  IOR refers to the finding that response times are slower to a target presented at a previously attended location than to a target presented at a previously unattended location. The work planned in this area focuses on the role of observer expectation and attentional momentum on the magnitude of IOR.