The Attentional Boost Effect and Context Memory

Stimuli co-occurring with targets in a detection task are better remembered than stimuli co-occurring with distractors--the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is of interest because it is an exception to the usual finding that divided attention during encoding impairs memory. The effect has bee...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition Vol. 42; no. 4; pp. 598 - 607
Main Authors Mulligan, Neil W, Smith, S. Adam, Spataro, Pietro
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Psychological Association 01.04.2016
Subjects
Attention
Auditory Stimuli
Discrimination (Psychology)
Experiments
Humans
Learning
Memory
North Carolina
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Prediction
Priming
Psycholinguistics
Psychological Tests
Reaction Time
Reading
Recognition (Psychology)
Speech Perception
Statistical Analysis
Stimuli
Test Items
Undergraduate Students
Visual Stimuli
Word Frequency
North Carolina
Online AccessGet more information

Cover

More Information
Summary:Stimuli co-occurring with targets in a detection task are better remembered than stimuli co-occurring with distractors--the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is of interest because it is an exception to the usual finding that divided attention during encoding impairs memory. The effect has been demonstrated in tests of item memory but it is unclear if context memory is likewise affected. Some accounts suggest enhanced perceptual encoding or associative binding, predicting an ABE on context memory, whereas other evidence suggests a more abstract, amodal basis of the effect. In Experiment 1, context memory was assessed in terms of an intramodal perceptual detail, the font and color of the study word. Experiment 2 examined context memory cross-modally, assessing memory for the modality (visual or auditory) of the study word. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed context memory with list discrimination, in which 2 study lists are presented and participants must later remember which list (if either) a test word came from. In all experiments, item (recognition) memory was also assessed and consistently displayed a robust ABE. In contrast, the attentional-boost manipulation did not enhance context memory, whether defined in terms of visual details, study modality, or list membership. There was some evidence that the mode of responding on the detection task (motoric response as opposed to covert counting of targets) may impact context memory but there was no evidence of an effect of target detection, per se. In sum, the ABE did not occur in context memory with verbal materials.
ISSN:0278-7393
1939-1285
DOI:10.1037/xlm0000183