The attentional boost effect enhances the recognition of bound features in short-term memory

ABSTRACT

In the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE), images or words encoded with unrelated to-be-responded targets are later remembered better than images or words encoded with to-be-ignored distractors. In the realm of short-term memory, the ABE has been previously shown to enhance the short-term recognition of single-feature stimuli. The present study replicated this finding and extended it to a condition requiring the encoding and retention of colour-shape associations. Across four experiments, participants studied arrays of four coloured squares (the colour-only condition), four gray shapes (the shape-only condition) or four coloured shapes (the binding condition), paired with either a target letter (to which participants had to respond by pressing the spacebar) or a distractor letter (for which no response was required). After a short delay, they were presented with a probe array and asked to decide whether it matched or not the encoded array. Results showed that, in all conditions, the recognition of target-paired arrays was significantly better than the recognition of distractor-paired arrays. These findings suggest that the ABE can enhance feature binding.

KEYWORDS:

• Attentional Boost Effect
• feature binding
• recognition
• working memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The terms “short-term memory” and “long-term memory” are used here in a descriptive way, according to the distinction proposed in Makovski et al. (2011), and are not intended to reflect current views of the processes underlying the formation of long-term memory traces, which imply a consolidation over longer periods of time.

2 For this and the following experiments, statistical analyses were always replicated by using the d’ scores (computed according to the guidelines reported by Stanislav & Todorov, 1999). Since the results did not change from those obtained with corrected recognition scores, we only reported the latter measures. It should be noted that a previous study by Allen et al. (2012) compared different measures of recognition memory performance (A′, d′, corrected recognition) and found they gave a converging picture of main effects. This is important because our focus was specifically aimed at determining the main effect of the ABE in the binding condition.