EFFECTS OF SECONDARY TASKS ON THE AUDITORY ATTENTIONAL BLINK

Abstract

The auditory attentional blink (AAB) is a phenomenon where a second target (T2) is missed when presented shortly after the first target (T1) in a rapid serial auditory stream. Some studies have shown that a diffuse mental state could attenuate the visual attentional blink (VAB), as it reduces overinvestment of attention towards T1 and distractors, leading to improved T2 accuracy. The present study examines if such attenuation effect will occur with the AAB. Participants performed the AAB task concurrently with a visual memory task, an auditory memory task, or no additional tasks. We found that concurrent tasks did not affect the magnitude of AAB, even though it impaired T1 accuracy. These observations point to a further examination of the factors affecting concurrency benefits in the AAB, such as task difficulty, and more broadly, overall working memory load. Implications of the role of working memory load towards the applicability of the overinvestment hypothesis and other attentional control mechanisms, along with the impact of modality differences, are discussed.