Why Does Attentional Blink Happen

Why Does Attentional Blink Happen Theories Cognitive Psychology Print Why Does Attentional Blink Happen? By Kendra Cherry facebook twitter Kendra Cherry, MS, is an author, educational consultant, and speaker focused on helping students learn about psychology. Learn about our editorial policy Kendra Cherry Updated on October 06, 2019 Philippe Bigard / Getty Images More in Theories Cognitive Psychology Behavioral Psychology Developmental Psychology Personality Psychology Social Psychology Biological Psychology Psychosocial Psychology When you shift your focus from one thing to another, a tiny gap  in attention called attentional blink is created. It only lasts for about half a second, so we barely notice it.   Your brain has limited attentional resources. If you have ever tried to focus on multiple things at once, you have likely discovered you could not fully pay attention to all of them. In some cases, you might even notice that some things seem to simply slide past you unnoticed. In one well-known demonstration of attentional blink, a series of letters and numbers are flashed on a screen in a rapid sequence. The viewer is asked to look for a specific pair of items, such as the number 2 and 7 and press a button when they spot the target numbers. In many cases, observers fail to see the second target when it occurs soon after the first one. Because attention is limited, focusing on the first target depletes these limited resources, essentially making the observer blind to the second target. Why Does It Occur? Some experts suggest that the attentional blink serves as a way to help the brain ignore distractions and focus on processing the first target. When an event occurs, the brain needs time to process it before it can move on to the next event. If a second event occurs during this critical processing time, it will simply be missed. There are a few different theories that seek to explain the attentional blink. Inhibition theory suggests that perceptual confusion occurs during the process of identifying targets, resulting in an attention gap. Interference theory posits that when different things competing for our attention, we may end up focusing on the wrong target. The attentional capacity theory proposes that when presented with two targets, the first target may take up too much of the available attention resources, making it more difficult to process the sight of the second target. Another popular theory is the two-stage processing theory. According to this idea, processing a series of items involves two different stages. The first stage involves noticing the targets, while the second involves actually processing the items so that they can be reported.   Attentional Blink in the Real World While many of the demonstrations of attentional blink involve rapid serial visual presentations in lab settings, this phenomenon can also influence how you experience events in the real world.   For example, imagine youre driving your car down a busy road when you notice a car in front of you has starting to drift into the other lane. Your attention becomes briefly focused on the other car, which limits your ability to attend to other traffic for about half a second. While that half-second period might seem very small, critical things can happen that can affect your safety. A deer might leap out into the road. The car in front of you might slam on its brakes. You might even start to drift slightly into the other lane. The attentional blink might be tiny, but it can certainly have serious consequences in real-world settings.