Sander Martens
Tenure-track assistant professor
E-mail: s.martens @ med.umcg.nl
Phone: +31 (0)50 3638796
Room: 124
Sander Martens

Research
Every day a bewildering amount of information is coming through our senses. Presumably, unlimited amounts of information can be activated in the brain. However, recent research has shown that the human ability to attend and remember concurrently presented information is severely limited. Therefore, we are forced to make a selection by distinguishing the information that is relevant to our current goals and intentions. The more efficient an individual is in ignoring irrelevant information, the more relevant information he or she will be able to take up and remember. However, as any teacher can acknowledge, not everyone is equally capable of efficiently selecting relevant information from irrelevant information, and therefore large individual differences exist in the amount of concurrently presented information that people can become aware of.

Topics that we are currently investigating include:
  • Individual differences in attentional selection and processing speed
  • Restrictions in attention and memory (the attentional blink) within and across sensory modalities
  • The relation between intelligence, prefrontal brain activity, and attentional capacity
  • The interaction between working memory and attention

    • Co-workers
    Dick Smid (Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Groningen)
    Addie Johnson (Experimental & Work Psychology, University of Groningen)
    Ritske de Jong (Experimental & Work Psychology, University of Groningen)
    Peter de Jong (Clinical & Developmental Psychology, University of Groningen)
    Andre Aleman (BCN NIC, University Medical Center Groningen)
    Niels Taatgen (Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, USA / Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen)
    Mary Potter (Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, USA)
    Brad Wyble (Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, USA)
    Dexuan Zhang (Department of Psychology, Peking University, China)

    PhD students
    Paolo Toffanin
    Katharina Goerlich

    Undergraduate students
    Mathijs Dun
    Ozlem Korucuoglu
    Shamiso Whitcomb
    Christiaan Verhulst (Research assistant)

    Blinking Minds Lab alumni students
    Liza Brouwer (Research assistant)
    Nikola Valchev
    Marlous Westra
    Martje Bolle
    Jelmer Borst (Research assistant)
    Marc Schipper
    Lisette van der Meer
    Evelien Platje
    Carolien Bakker
    Annet Hageman
    Arnoud Molier
    Richard de Goede
    Jaap Munneke
    Marten Haanstra
    Anja Dieterman
    Raquel London
    Kariem Elmallah

    Publications
    1. Duncan, J., Martens, S., & Ward, R. (1997). Restricted attentional capacity within but not between sensory modalities. Nature, 387, 808-810.

    2. Martens, S., & Wolters, G. (2002). Interference in implicit memory due to processing interpolated material. American Journal of Psychology, 115, 169-185.

    3. Martens, S., Wolters, G., & van Raamsdonk, M. (2002). Blinks of the mind: Memory effects of attentional processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28(6), 1275-1287.

    4. Martens, S., & Johnson, A. (2005). Timing attention: Cuing target onset interval attenuates the attentional blink. Memory & Cognition, 33(2), 234-240.

    5. Shapiro, K., Schmitz, F., Martens, S., Hommel, B., & Schnitzler, A. (2006). Resource sharing in the attentional blink. NeuroReport, 17(2), 163-166.

    6. Martens, S, Elmallah, K., London, R., & Johnson, A. (2006). Cuing and stimulus effects on the P3 and the AB. Acta Psychologica, 123, 204-218.

    7. Martens, S., Munneke, J., Smid, H., & Johnson, A. (2006). Quick minds don’t blink: Electrophysiological correlates of individual differences in attentional selection. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18(9), 1423-1438.

    8. De Jong, P. J., & Martens, S. (2007). Detection of emotional expressions in rapidly changing facial displays in high and low socially anxious women. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 1285-1294.

    9. Nieuwenstein, M. R., Johnson, A., Kanai, R., & Martens, S. (2007). Cross-task repetition amnesia: Impaired recall of RSVP targets held in memory for a secondary task. Acta Psychologica, 125, 319-333.

    10. Toffanin, P., de Jong, R., Johnson, A., & Martens, S. (2007). Rethinking neural efficiency: Effects of controlling for strategy use. Behavioral Neuroscience, 121, 854-870.

    11. Martens, S., & Valchev, N. (in press). Individual differences in the attentional blink: The important role of irrelevant information. Experimental Psychology.

    12. Martens, S., Johnson, A, Bolle, M., & Borst, J. (in press). A quick visual mind can be a slow auditory mind: Individual differences in attentional selection across modalities. Experimental Psychology.

    13. Martens, S., & Johnson, A., Working memory capacity, intelligence, and the magnitude of the attention blink revisited. Experimental Brain Research.

    14. Martens, S., & Johnson, A. (2009). Working memory capacity, intelligence, and the magnitude of the attentional blink revisited. Experimental Brain Research, 192, 43-52 .

    15. Martens, S., & Valchev, N. (2009). Individual differences in the attentional blink: The important role of irrelevant information. Experimental Psychology, 56(1), 18-26 .

    16. Martens, S., Johnson, A, Bolle, M., & Borst, J. (2009). A quick visual mind can be a slow auditory mind: Individual differences in attentional selection across modalities. Experimental Psychology, 56(1), 33-40 .

    17. Taatgen, N. A., Juvina, I., Schipper, M., Borst, J., & Martens, S. (2009). Too much control can hurt: A threaded cognition model of the attentional blink. Cognitive Psychology, 59, 1-29.

    18. De Jong, P. J., Koster, E. H. W., van Wees, R., & Martens, S. (2009). Emotional facial expressions and the attentional blink: Attenuated blink for angry and happy faces irrespective of social anxiety. Cognition & Emotion, 23(8), 1640-1652.

    19. Toffanin, P., de Jong, R., Johnson, A., & Martens, S. (2009). Use of frequency tagging to quantify attentional deployment in a visual divided attention task. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 72(3), 289-298 .

    20. Zhang, D., Zhou, X., & Martens, S. (2009). The impact of negative attentional set upon target processing in RSVP: An ERP study. Neuropsychologia, 47(12), 2604-2614 .

    21. Martens, S., & Wyble, B. (in press). The attentional blink: Past, present, and future of a blind spot in perceptual awareness. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews .