Timing attention: Cuing target onset interval attenuates the attentional blink

Three experiments tested whether the attentional blink (AB; a deficit in reporting the second of two targets when it occurs 200—500 msec after the first) can be attenuated by providing information about the target onset asynchrony (TOA) of the second target relative to the first. Blocking the TOA did not improve second-target performance relative to a condition in which the TOA varied randomly from trial to trial (Experiment 1). In contrast, explicitly cuing the TOA on a trial-by-trial basis attenuated the AB without a cost to first-target identification (Experiments 2 and 3). The results suggest that temporal cues influence the allocation of attentional resources by adding temporal information to the perceptual description of the second target that can then be used to filter targets from nontargets, resulting in enhanced accuracy.