The attentional boost effect and context memory.

Abstract

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.

Attending to behaviorally relevant moments enhances incidental relational memory

“…Experiments 1-3 additionally establish a reliable effect of target detection on relational memory that extends to relevant and irrelevant features of detection task items. However, these data differ from two other studies that examined whether the attentional boost effect facilitates memory for the semantic or perceptual context in which words were encoded (Mulligan et al, 2016;Spataro et al, 2017). Though there are many ways in which these experiments differed from the ones presented here, we will focus on several factors that might explain differences in the results and warrant further investigation.…”

“…If attending to behaviorally relevant moments influences the encoding of an event, it must do so via its constituent items, their features, and their relationship to one another. Multiple studies have already demonstrated that such temporal selection enhances memory for items (e.g., Lin et al, 2010;Makovski, Jiang, & Swallow, 2013;Mulligan et al, 2016;Swallow & Jiang, 2010). The current study supports this conclusion.…”

“…In another study, participants were better able to report which pictures appeared with a target item than which pictures appeared with a distractor item during encoding (Swallow & Atir, 2018). In contrast, a recent experiment found no effect of target detection on memory for the context of concurrently presented words, such as their font, modality, or whether the words were presented during the first or second half of the encoding task (Mulligan, Smith, & Spataro, 2016). Differences in the effect of target detection on category cued recall and exemplar generation also suggest primarily item-based effects of target detection on memory (Spataro, Mulligan, Bechi Gabrielli, & Rossi-Arnaud, 2017).…”

“…However, previous findings demonstrating relational memory advantage for items presented on target trials (Swallow & Atir, 2018) could reflect memory for the motor response, the status of the square as a target or distractor, or memory for the color of the square itself. In addition, because participants show no memory advantage for the features of words that appeared with targets rather than distractors (Mulligan et al, 2016), the degree to which earlier findings reflect an effect of target detection on relational memory remains uncertain.…”

A context-change account of temporal distinctiveness

“…Using scene stimuli embedded with rare target response cues (white squares) to which participants were instructed to respond, and more frequent distractor cues (black squares) to which participants were instructed not to respond, Swallow and Jiang found that scenes paired with target cues were better recognized later relative to scenes paired with the common distractor cues. This main ABE has been demonstrated to arise for perceptually and semantically isolated stimuli (Smith & Mulligan, 2018), though it was not found to transfer to irrelevant background features of the experience, such as the font or color of words (Mulligan, Smith, & Spataro, 2015). The overlap with these studies suggest that the item presentations inducing a large relative context change engage attention, thereby increasing item processing and subsequent memory.…”