Capturing and Unmasking the Mask in the Auditory Attentional Blink

Key to our understanding of the temporal limits of attention as reflected in the attentional blink (AB) – the failure to report the second of two targets (T1 and T2) presented in close succession – is the detrimental impact of posttarget distractors, accounted for typically by the construct of masking. Within the context of the auditory AB, we tested the notion of masking by seeking to perceptually “capture” the T2 + 1 distractor away from the target-containing sequence to examine whether perceptual organizational factors could, instead, explain the action of T2 + 1. Using monaural sequences of tones, the presentation of T2 + 1 contralaterally to the rest of the sounds produced the AB. However, the AB was abolished when that contralateral T2 + 1 was perceptually grouped with an induction sequence of irrelevant tones presented to the contralateral ear. Such findings are consistent with a selection-based approach to the AB that emphasizes failure of inhibition and misselection while suggesting a diminished role for masking