• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.275-301
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• 2016

Attentional blink (AB) refers to the phenomena where conscious report for a target (T2) subsequent to the first target (T1) in a stream of items under rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) becomes difficult if the T2 follows no later than 500ms after the T1. The present study examined the effect of T1 visibility on T2 AB strength according to the bottleneck account proposing that the amount of allocated resources for T1 memory consolidation determines the strength of AB against T2. In the low-visibility condition, the T1 had a gray color for a low stimulus contrast against the black background whereas had a bright and saturated color in the high-visibility condition. In both visibility conditions, the T1 was also highly distinct from the remaining distractors. A multi-RSVP method was also used for increasing location uncertainty of the targets supposedly consuming on average attentional resources for the targets. Two experiments revealed that AB strength was more intense in the low-visibility than high-visibility condition, and the pattern of difference went more pronounced if T2 visibility was improved. The results indicate that T1 visibility can affect more strongly when attentional resources are relatively lacking for resolving the T1 bottleneck, and support for the bottleneck account proposing that the level of T1's visibility can determine the intensity of the T1 bottleneck.