Measuring attentional blink magnitude: Reliability and validity of a novel single-target rapid serial visual presentation task index in a psychiatric sample

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tasks have been frequently used to assess attentional control in psychiatric samples; however, it is unclear whether RSVP tasks exhibits the psychometric properties necessary to assess these individual differences. In the current study, we examined the reliability and validity of single-target computerized RSVP task outcomes in a sample of 63 participants with moderate to severe psychiatric illness. At the group level, we observed the classical attentional blink phenomenon. At the individual level, conventional indices of attentional blink magnitude exhibited poor internal consistency. We empirically evaluated a novel index for assessing attentional blink magnitude using a single-target RSVP task that involves collapsing across experimental trials in which the attentional blink phenomenon occurs and disregarding performance on control trials, which suffer from ceiling effects. We found that this new index resulted in much improved reliability estimates. Both novel and conventional indices provided evidence of convergent validity. Consequently, this novel index may be worth examining and adopting for researchers interested in assessing individual differences in attentional blink magnitude.