Target-target similarity and the attentional blink: Task-relevance matters!

Studies of the attentional blink (AB) indicate that similarity modulates the magnitude of the impairment in reporting the second of two masked targets. The present experiments tested whether similarity-based modulations of the AB are determined by all object dimensions or by task-relevant dimensions only. Similarity between target faces was manipulated on two dimensions, only one of which was task relevant. The results indicated that similarity on the task-relevant dimension modulated the AB, whereas similarity on task-irrelevant dimension did not. These results suggest that selection during the AB can occur on the level of task-relevant dimensions.