Attentional Blink

Attentional blink is a psychological effect in which a person struggles to notice a second target in a rapid visual sequence if it appears between about 200 and 500 milliseconds after a first target and is followed by further distracting items. In a fast stream of letters, for example, if two particular letters are the targets to spot, the second is often missed when another letter intervenes between them. The effect is typically measured using rapid serial visual presentation tasks, in which items flash one after another in quick succession, and it has also been observed with backward-masked visual targets and with auditory stimuli. The term attentional blink was first used in 1992, though the underlying phenomenon was likely known before that.