RESEARCH ARTICLE Musical Minds: Attentional Blink Reveals Modality-Specific Restrictions

Background Formal musical training is known to have positive effects on attentional and executive func-tioning, processing speed, and working memory. Consequently, one may expect to find dif-ferences in the dynamics of temporal attention between musicians and non-musicians. Here we address the question whether that is indeed the case, and whether any beneficial effects of musical training on temporal attention are modality specific or generalize across sensory modalities. Methodology/Principal Findings When two targets are presented in close temporal succession, most people fail to report the second target, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). We measured and com-pared AB magnitude for musicians and non-musicians using auditory or visually presented letters and digits. Relative to non-musicians, the auditory AB was both attenuated and de-layed in musicians, whereas the visual AB was larger. Non-musicians with a large auditory AB tended to show a large visual AB. However, neither a positive nor negative correlatio