Effects of phonological similarity on RSVP dual target search

When people have to search for two visual targets in a sequence of distractors shown at rates of about 10 items per second they frequently miss the second target if it follows first target within a few hundred ms. This difficulty in target detection is known as the attentional blink. We report several experiments in which phonological similarity of post-Target 1 distractors was found to impair dual target report within the interval in which the attentional blink occurs. Target similarity was less likely to impair performance. Phonological similarity of letter distractors had no effect on single target identification but reduced dual target report even when targets and distractors belonged to different categories. The results provide evidence for phonological encoding of distractors despite the fact that these stimuli should be ignored. The implications for two-stage theories of the attentional blink are considered.