The Influence Of Targeted Presenting Time On The Attentional Boost Effect

Previous studies have suggested that distraction usually damages subsequent memory in memory coding,but recent studies have found that distracting attention with a targeted detection secondary task did not damage the memory performance by stimuli.What's more,the recognition memory scores of background information presented together with the target squares were better than those of background information presented simultaneously with the distraction squares(Swallow&Jiang,2010).Swallow and Jiang referred to this phenomenon as the Attentional Boost Effect(ABE).In this study,experiment 1 adopted the learning-test paradigm of targeted detection.By setting different overlapping times between the targeted detection stimulus and background information in the coding stage,the results showed that ABE occured not only in the early stage of coding,but also during the time when the targeted detection and background information overlapped.In order to investigate whether the duration of background information would affect the ABE,experiment 2 changed the presentation time of background information.By extending the presentation time to 1500ms,the results showed that the targeted detection,presented either early or late in the coding,had an ABE.Thus,the results supported the explanation on the time selective attention.Since the targeted detection not only promotes the early processing of coding,but also promotes the memory of late coding.In order to further investigate whether targeted detection only promotes the perceptual processing of background information,experiment 3 changed the presentation modes of the learning-test by replacing the font of the test stage from boldface type to Chinese italics.The results showed that different presentation modes of the learning-test did not affect the generation of ABE,which means that the targeted detection promotes not only the perceptual processing of background information,but also its abstract modeless representations.Results from above suggested that ABE occurs at any time wihout the limitation for the presentation time of background information,and the targeted detection could facilitate the representations of background information.