Attentional Blink

“You detect one target in a rapid stream. The next arrives too soon and disappears.”

01 / PLAINLY

What it means, plainly

After detecting one target in a rapid stream, people can miss another that appears almost immediately afterward.

02 / CONTEXT

A little more

After identifying a first target in a rapid sequence, detection of a second often drops when it appears a few hundred milliseconds later. Temporal attention has a bottleneck.

03 / WHY IT MATTERS

Why it matters

Two important alerts delivered almost together can compete, with the first making the second harder to register.

04 / EXAMPLE

A familiar example

In a fast stream of letters, recognizing one digit can make a second digit immediately afterward difficult to report.

05 / LIMIT

What it does not mean

It is not a physical blink of the eye, and the exact window changes with task and training.

06 / NOTICE

Notice it in your day

Find two consecutive alerts in a flow you use or design. Separate their timing and check whether each becomes clearly identifiable.

FINAL NOTE

The idea worth keeping

Separate two important alerts in time; making them compete for the same instant can hide the second.

QUESTIONS / 02

Questions people still have

Is this a physical blink of the eye?

No. The name describes a timing limit in attention, not the eyelids closing.

Is the window always identical?

No. Its exact duration varies with the task and training.