Restricted attentional capacity within but not between sensory modalities

John Duncan (), Sander Martens and Robert Ward
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John Duncan: *MRC Applied Psychology Unit
Sander Martens: †Unit of Experimental and Theoretical Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Leiden University
Robert Ward: ‡School of Psychology, University of Wales

Nature, 1997, vol. 387, issue 6635, 808-810

Abstract: Abstract Restrictions to attentional capacity are revealed by the interference that commonly results when two sensory inputs must be identified at the same time1. To investigate this phenomenon within and between modalities, we presented streams of visual and/or auditory inputs, containing occasional targets to be identified and recalled. For two visual or two auditory streams, identification of one target produced a sustained reduction in the ability to identify a second, the period of interference lasting for several hundred milliseconds. Subjectively, when attention was assigned to one target it was temporarily unavailable for another. In contrast, there was no such time-locked interference between targets in different modalities. The results suggest a modality-specific restriction to concurrent attention and awareness; visual attention to one simple target does not restrict concurrent auditory attention to another.

Date: 1997
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DOI: 10.1038/42947

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