The attentional blink is diminished for targets that form coherent semantic categories

Studies have shown that the attentional blink (AB) effect is diminished for intrinsically salient T2 stimuli, such as arousing, familiar, personally relevant words, or stimuli with salient low-level visual features. We examined whether the AB is diminished also for stimuli that do not have special inherent properties but are made salient by the context. One such contextual factor is the coherence of the T2 stimulus set. In three experiments, we found that the AB is diminished for stimuli that form a coherent semantic category within the T2 stimulus set. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Research Highlights► We examined whether the AB is diminished for T2 stimuli that form a coherent category. ► T2 stimuli were affectively neutral but salient because of contextual manipulations. ► Results show that the AB is diminished for T2 stimuli that form a coherent category. ► Our findings suggest that the AB can be affected by subtle top-down influences. ► Furthermore our we suggest that future research should take coherence into account.