““A stream of symbols appears at the same location on a computer screen. Most of the symbols are digits, but some are letters, which the participant is told to remember. The first letter is easily remembered. If a second letter occurs half a second or more after the first, it too is accurately committed to memory. If the two letters appear in close succession, however, the second one is often completely missed. The viewer reports seeing only one letter and is quite surprised to learn that there were two of them. The very act of attending to the first letter creates a temporary "blink of the mind" that annihilates the perception of the second.””
