Attentional Blink Effects on S-Cone Stimuli

Abstract

This study aimed to compare attentional blink (AB) effects on S-cone and on luminance stimuli. Recent research had revealed considerable AB effects not only on high-order visual areas but also on low-order visual areas. Therefore, whether AB formation occurred or not at primary visual cortex must be examined. Previous studies had reported the absence of attention modulation in an early koniocellular pathway driven by S-cone stimuli; therefore, the AB effects on S-cone stimuli would be a strong piece of evidence for late-stage hypothesis at least in the koniocellular pathway. For this study, 12 participants were instructed to identify a centrally presented target (T1) only or to identify either T1 or a peripheral target (T2). The targets were either luminance or S-cone stimuli. As expected, comparable AB effects on S-cone and luminance stimuli were observed. Findings suggested that AB formation through a koniocellular pathway must occur at a later cortical processing stage.