19 7 inhibition, two tone 22,Fg.14 abrupt and gradual 27 15 fig. 19 34 30 called Howell " 0 37 spaces they • • • 41 becoming the 39 19 Sachs Voigt 42 fi9. 20ms 55 last 350Hz 62 last Linbom 75 31 locus?

When a rapid succession of auditory stimuli is listened to, processing of the second of two successive targets among fillers is often impaired, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). Three experiments were conducted to examine the role of filler items in modulating the size of the auditory AB, using a two-alternative forced choice discrimination paradigm. In the first experiment, dual-stream presentations in which low- and high-pitch items were separated by six semitones were tested. A transient deficit in reporting the probe was observed in the presence of fillers that was greater when fillers were in the same stream as the probe. In the absence of a filler, there was a residual deficit, but this was not related to the time lag between the target and the probe. In the second and third experiments, in which single-stream presentations were used, a typical AB was found in the presence of homogeneous fillers, but heterogeneous fillers tended to produce a greater deficit. In the absence of a filler, there was little or no evidence of a blink. The pattern of results suggests that other attentional and perceptual factors contribute to the blink. A notable example of a limitation to attentional selectivity is manifest in the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon. When two successive targets among nontargets (or