The Attentional Blink (AB) refers to a striking imbalance in the identification accuracy of two targets presented in rapid succession. Whereas the first target is identified almost perfectly, identification of the second is severely impaired. Our research (see Recent Publications ) points to two quite separable aspects of the AB. One concerns the contribution of visual masking. The other concerns attentional switching between the two targets. We believe the AB to be a temporal index of the cognitive cost of reconfiguring the visual processing system with the objective of optimizing performance on the task at hand.