When two masked targets (T1 and T2), both requiring

attention, are presented within half a second of each other, report of the second target is poor (Broadbent & Broad-bent, 1987; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). However, T2 report is good when T2 is presented more than half a second after T1 or when T1 does not require attention (Raymond et al., 1992). Raymond et al. (1992) named this pattern of results the attentional blink (AB). AB ex-periments require participants to make unspeeded re-sponses after the presentation of all stimuli has ended. The fact that there is no need for on-line response selec-tion has helped to convince many researchers that the AB results from relatively early processing limitations that occur before central (amodal) processing bottlenecks. In early AB experiments, only visual stimuli were used as targets and distractors, and these were often presented using the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tech-nique in which letters or words appeared rapidly one at a time in the same spatial location. Owing to the use of vi-sual stimuli and the assumption that the AB resulted from relatively early processing limitations, the visual nature of the stimuli and their processing became incorporated into various theories of the AB (e.g., Duncan, Ward, &amp