Lingering effects of inattention on the recognition of novel forms.
Two experiments are reported in which participants were instructed to attend to one of two overlapping figures and report how distinctive it was (Experiment 1), or how angular it was or what it resembled (Experiment 2). Tests of recognition memory indicated that recognition of the unattended figures was below chance, consistent with the conclusion that an implicit memory of the unattended figures and an "action tag" to not respond to the figures combine at recognition to suppress positive identification. Furthermore, participants that scored high on an index of working memory ability showed worse memory for the unattended shapes, suggesting that the ability to control attention not only enhances memory for attended items, but also leads to greater suppression of unattended distractors.
Becker
D Vaughn
DV
Department of Applied Psychology, Arizona State University at the Polytechnic Campus, Mesa, AZ 85212, USA. vaughn.becker@asu.edu
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult