Rapid serial visual presentation

Rapid serial visual presentation is an experimental model frequently used to examine the temporal characteristics of attention. The RSVP paradigm requires participants to look at a continuous presentation of visual items which is around 10 items per second. They are all shown in the same place. The targets are implanted inside this stream of continuous items. They are separate from the rest of the items and can be called distracters. The distracters can either be a color change or it can be letters that are among the numbers.

There is a delay of several hundred milliseconds. A person might be asked to identify numbers in a string of letters which are shown one by one. The first number which is an important target, would be caught by the person, however, the second number flashed seconds later might not be observed. There are a number of theories to explain how and why this works and studies have explored its limitations and parameters to learn more about visual perception. The brain deals with a quick stream of incoming information at all times. With the attentional blink, the brain has to distribute its attentional resources to comprehend, interpret, and store the information properly. The human brain is capable of processing complex tasks, but it has restrictions. The attentional blink is an illustration that has a significant insinuation for individuals who work in environments where they are usually swamped with information. An example of this is an airport baggage screener who might see a knife in one bag, but misses a second knife in another bag that is right behind the first bag. The failure to recognize the second target is because of the attentional processes that are linked with the identification of the first target.

Potter (1976) explored the amount people who are able to comprehend and memorize information from fast series of stimuli. Potter had participants search for the RSVP series of pictures for a specific picture which was the target. This was depicted before the appearance of the RSVP series. Results showed that participants performed well on this task. Here, the RSVP rate was eight items per second; however, participants were still able to accurately find the target on 75% of the trials. Performance was not different in the pictures that were previously presented or described. Each picture was acknowledged within 125 milliseconds. However, Potter & Levy (1969) found that performance did change when participants were assessed on a recognition task for the pictures presented in the RSVP sequence. The results showed that the participants’ performance accurately scored 10% in the task when the RSVP rate was eight items per second.

Sperling and colleagues examined the RSVP paradigm to investigate the dynamics of shifts of spatial attention (e.g., Reeves & Sperling, 1986; Sperling & Weichselgartner, 1995). Spatial attention is defined as the ability to center on specific stimuli in a visual environment (Johnson & Proctor, 2004). Sperling used an attention shift procedure in which two RSVP series were presented altogether. There was a central point where one was to the left and the other was to the right of the focus point. One series contained letters and the other series contained numbers. The object of the task was for participants to focus on the letter stream and to report items from the number series following a certain letter. Results showed that participants frequently reported numbers that were heard around 400 milliseconds after the cue. They concluded that the findings were parallel with the time participants were required to shift attention from the series that had the letters to the series that had the numbers.

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