Open AccessThe Blink and the Body
Author(s) -
Erik M. Benau,
Ruth Ann Atchley
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
experimental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2190-5142
pISSN - 1618-3169
DOI - 10.1027/1618-3169/a000539
Subject(s) - psychology , attentional blink , stimulus (psychology) , audiology , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , cognition , neuroscience , medicine
. We evaluated the interaction of emotion, interoceptive awareness (IA), and attention using an attentional blink (AB) task. Healthy undergraduates completed a cardiac awareness task and, based on previously validated cut scores, were classified as high or average perceivers ( n = 19 in each group; matched on age and gender). Participants completed an AB task with counterbalanced emotional and/or neutral lexical stimuli as the first target (T1) and/or the second target (T2). Both high and average perceivers exhibited retroactive interference in conditions where T2 immediately followed T1. However, only the average perceivers exhibited a significant blink effect: They reported T2 inaccurately in trials in which one intervening stimulus occurred between T1 and T2. High perceivers exhibited their best performance in trials where both targets were emotional; average perceivers exhibited their worst performance in these trials. These results contribute to a small but growing literature that suggests IA and exteroceptive attention are related systems.