Behavioural and electrophysiological investigations of the attentional blink

在我们的日常生活中，我们经常必须同时执行两项任务，或者同时处理多个刺激。例如，我们可能会在开车的时候打手机，或者在听讲座的时候做笔记。我们试图组合执行的许多任务都需要注意力。与我们希望一次完成所有事情的愿望不一致的是，我们在任何时候都可以关注和处理的信息量是有限的。这种注意力限制是令人沮丧的，因为它们经常预测在多任务处理的条件下一个或多个任务的即将失败，即使当两个任务不共享相同的输入（例如，眼睛）或输出（例如，手）系统。然而，我们在多任务情况下的失败可以提供有关注意力的功能和基本人类处理限制的有价值的信息。

In our everyday lives we must often perform two tasks at once, or attend to more than one stimulus at a time. For example, we may talk on our cellular phone while driving, or take notes while listening to a lecture. Many of the tasks we try to perform in combination require attention. At odds with our desire to do everything at once is the fact that there are finite limits on how much information we can attend to and process at any one time. Such attentional limitations are frustrating in that they often predict the imminent failure of one or more tasks under conditions of multi-tasking even when two tasks do not share the same input (e.g., eyes) or output (e.g., hands) systems. However, our failures in multi-task situations can provide valuable information concerning functional and fundamental human processing limitations on attention.