RESEARCH INTERESTS

Cognitive Psychology - Information Processing and Attention, ERPs, Emotion
- attentional limitations
- the attentional blink
- electrophysiology and attentional limitations
- cross-modal attention
- emotion and attention
- attentional functioning and emotional states

My current research examines the electrophysiological and behavioural indices of attentional limitations over time intervals of less than a second. The mind cannot attend to everything at once. In my experiments I present stimuli very rapidly (approx. 10/second) and ask human participants to attend to one or more targets that must be reported. The nature of the targets, the time between targets, and the presentation conditions are varied within and across experiments. Interpretation of the pattern of report accuracy and/or speed allows me to infer the nature and duration of processing each target receives. Electrophysiological recordings are also taken while the participants perform such tasks. Brain wave recordings are time-locked to target presentation, producing event-related potentials (ERPs). The onset, latency, and presence/absence of various components of the brain waves also provide important information regarding nature and duration of processing each target receives. I also examine how dual-task processing limitations are modulated by the emotional immpact of the stimuli, as well as the participant's affective state and dispositional affect. I am also interested in isolating cognitive and affective predictors of individual differences in dual-task attention costs.

RECENT REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS:
FOR A MORE COMPLETE LIST OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS PLEASE VISIT MY LAB WEBSITE

• MacLean, M. H. & Arnell, K. M. (in press). A Conceptual and Methodological Framework for Measuring and Modulating the Attentional Blink  Attention, Perception & Psychophysics.
  
  
• Stokes, K. A. & Arnell, K. M. (in press). New considerations for the cognitive locus of impairment in the irrelevant-sound effect. Memory and Cognition.
  
  
• Dale, G. & Arnell, K. M. (in press). How reliable is the attentional blink? Examining the relationships within and between attentional blink tasks over time. Psychological Research.
  
  
• MacLean, M. H., Arnell, K. M. & Cote. K. A. (2012). Resting EEG in alpha and beta bands predicts individual differences in attentional blink magnitude. Brain and Cognition, 78, 218-229.
  
  
• Arnell, K. M. & Shapiro, K. L. (2011). Attentional blink and repetition blindness. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science, 2, 336-344.  

• MacLean, M. H. & Arnell, K. M. (2011). Greater attentional blink magnitude is associated with higher levels of anticipatory attention as measured by alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD). Brain Research, 1387, 99-107.

• MacLean, M. H. & Arnell, K. M. (2010). Personality predicts temporal attention costs in the attentional blink paradigm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17, 556-562.
  
  
• Dale, G. & Arnell, K. M. (2010). Individual differences in dispositional focus/diffusion of attention predict attentional blink magnitude. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 72, 602-606.
  
  
• Arnell, K. M. & Stubitz, S. (2010). Attentional blink magnitude if predicted by the ability to keep irrelevant material out of working memory. Psychological Research, 5, 457-467.
  
  
• MacLean, M. H., Arnell, K. M. & Busseri, M. (2010). Dispositional affect predicts temporal attention costs in the attentional blink paradigm. Cognition & Emotion, 24, 1431-1438.
  
  
• Arnell, K. M., Stokes, K. A., MacLean, M. E., & Gicante, C. (2010). Executive control processes of working memory predict attentional blink magnitude over and above storage capacity. Psychological Research, 74, 1-11.
  
  
• Shapiro, K. L., Raymond, J. E., & Arnell, K. M. (2009). The attentional blink. Scholarpedia, 4(6):3320.
  [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Attentional_blink]
  
  
• Arnell, K. M., Joanisse, M., Klein, R., Busseri, M. A., & Tannock, R. (2009). Decomposing the relarion between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading ability. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 173-184.
  
  
• Seifert, A. L., Arnell, K. M., & Kiviniemi, M. T. (2008) The Relation of Body Dissatisfaction to Salience of Particular Body Sizes. Eating and Weight Disorders, 13, 84-90.
  
  
• Ptito, A., Arnell, K. M., Jolicoeur. P., & MacLeod, J. (2008). Intramodal and crossmodal processing delays in the attentional blink paradigm revealed by event-related potentials. Psychophysiology, 45, 794-803.
  
  
• Mathewson, K.M., Arnell, K.M., & Mansfield, C. (2008). Capturing and holding attention: The impact of emotional words in rapid serial visual presentation. Memory & Cognition,36, 182-200.
  
  
• Aquino, J.M., & Arnell, K.M. (2007). Attention and the processing of emotional words: Dissociating effects of arousal. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 430-435.
  
  
• Arnell, K.M., Killman, K.V., & Fijavz, D. (2007). Blinded by emotion: Target misses follow attention capture by arousing distractors in RSVP. Emotion, 7, 465-477.
  
  
• Arnell, K.M., Howe, A.E., Joanisse, M.F., Klein, R.W. (2006). Relationship between attentional blink magnitude, RSVP target accuracy, and performance on other cognitive tasks. Memory & Cognition, 34, 1472-1483.
  
  
• Arnell, K.M. (2006). Visual, auditory, and cross-modality dual-task costs: Electrophysiological evidence for an amodal bottleneck on working memory consolidation. Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 447-457.
  
  
• Howe, A.E., Arnell, K.M., Klein, R.M., Joanisse, M.F. & Tannock, R. (2006). The ABCs of computerized naming: Equivalency, reliability, and predictive validity of a computerized rapid automatized naming (RAN) task. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 151, 30-37.
  
  
• Arnell, K.M. & Jenkins, R. (2004). Revisiting within-modality and cross-modality attentional blinks: Effects of target-distractor similarity. Perception & Psychophysics, 66, 1147-1161.
  

• Arnell, K.M., Helion, A.M., Hurdelbrink, J.A., & Pasieka, B. (2004).. Dissociating sources of dual-task interference using human electrophysiology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 77-83.