Attentional demands and recall of verbal and color information in action events

Two experiments addressed the influence of secondary task performance at encoding on recall of different features of subject-performed tasks (SPTs) involving objects (e.g., turn the wallet). In Experiment 1, memory for verbs and colors of objects was assessed, with object names serving as cues. In E...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inScandinavian journal of psychology Vol. 34; no. 3; p. 246
Main Authors Bäckman, L, Nilsson, L G, Nourp, R K
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England 01.09.1993
Subjects
Adult
Attention
Color Perception
Female
Humans
Male
Mental Recall
Paired-Associate Learning
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Semantics
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Summary:Two experiments addressed the influence of secondary task performance at encoding on recall of different features of subject-performed tasks (SPTs) involving objects (e.g., turn the wallet). In Experiment 1, memory for verbs and colors of objects was assessed, with object names serving as cues. In Experiment 2, object and color memory were assessed, with verbs serving as cues. Results from both experiments indicated a greater deterioration of memory performance under divided attention for verbal features than for colors. In addition, intention to remember did not affect performance for any feature in either experiment. The overall pattern of outcome is discussed relative to the view that encoding of verbal features of SPTs is more attention-demanding than encoding of physical task features, such as color.
ISSN:0036-5564
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9450.1993.tb01119.x