Semantic and Syntactic Associations During Word Search Modulate the Relationship Between Attention and Subsequent Memory

ABSTRACT

Two experiments were conducted to investigate how linguistic information influences attention allocation in visual search and memory for words. In Experiment 1, participants searched for the synonym of a cue word among five words. The distractors included one antonym and three unrelated words. In Experiment 2, participants were asked to judge whether the five words presented on the screen comprise a valid sentence. The relationships among words were sentential, semantically related or unrelated. A memory recognition task followed. Results in both experiments showed that linguistically related words produced better memory performance. We also found that there were significant interactions between linguistic relation conditions and memorization on eye-movement measures, indicating that good memory for words relied on frequent and long fixations during search in the unrelated condition but to a much lesser extent in linguistically related conditions. We conclude that semantic and syntactic associations attenuate the link between overt attention allocation and subsequent memory performance, suggesting that linguistic relatedness can somewhat compensate for a relative lack of attention during word search.

KEYWORDS:

• Eye movements
• memory
• semantics
• visual search

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Beijing Key Lab of Learning and Cognition in Capital Normal University for their support.

Funding

This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 31500886]; Research Fund for the Talented Persons of Beijing City [grant number 2014000020124G238]; Beijing Municipal Commission of Education Key Program of Science and Technology [grant number KZ201410028034]; Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Imaging Technology [grant number BAICIT-2016018]; China National Institute of Standardization through the “special funds for the basic R&D undertakings by welfare research institutions” [grant number 522015Y-3991, 522016Y-4483].