One curious aspect of the attentional blink is that it usually includes "lag-1 sparing". Targets presented "very" close together in time with no intervening distractors (at "lag 1" or consecutively in the RSVP stream) are not affected by the attentional blink, even though items presented at greater lags with intervening distractors are significantly impaired. This sparing can be spread over multiple targets, as long as no non-target items occur between them in the stream. Lag-1 sparing can be explained by theories in which attentional engagement with the stream is suppressed upon detection of a non-target stimulus.