This thesis is concerned with the issue of how humans select visually
presented objects for action when those objects are presented rapidly and for very brief durations. Results have shown that when two events or objects occur within about half a second of each other, people find it difficult to accurately report one or both events (Kanwisher, 1987; Pashler, 1994; Raymond, Shapiro & Arnell, 1992). The experiments in this thesis examined the role of inhibitory processes in resolving this problem. This was accomplished by developing a hybrid Negative Priming- Rapid Serial Visual Presentation paradigm.
Results from Experiment 1 showed that distractors presented in close temporal proximity to a target, negatively prime a related probe stimulus. This effect was termed 'post-target inhibition'. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that a) post-target inhibition results from selecting a target stimulus b) the locus of
this inhibition is at the level of response representations and c) post-target
inhibition interacts with the Attentional Blink phenomenon.
Inhibition has long been a mechanism implicated in aiding spatial selection.
This work provides a bridge between the domains of spatial and temporal selection since it suggests that the latter also relies on inhibition.