The yellow light: Predictability enhances background processing during behaviorally relevant events.
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: The attentional boost effect refers to the observation that when simultaneously performing a scene memory task and a target detection task, participants better remember scenes that appear at the same time as the detection target than scenes that coincide with distractors. The attentional boost effect is thought to result from a transient increase in attention during an acute behaviorally relevant event, resulting from a temporal orienting response. But can endogenous orienting to predictable targets trigger this response in the same manner as exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets? Until now, the attentional boost effect has only been tested under conditions in which the target's appearance was unpredictable. Because of the distinction between exogenous and endogenous orienting, target predictability could attenuate the attentional boost effect, or it could increase temporal orienting efficiency and enhance the effect. To test the attentional boost effect under predictable conditions, participants memorized scenes while responding to a target digit, 0, among a stream of digits appearing in the center of those scenes. In some blocks, the 0 predictably followed the digit sequence 3-2-1. In these predictable blocks, participants showed a robust attentional boost effect. This shows that both endogenous orienting to temporally predictable targets and exogenous orienting to unpredictable targets enhance concurrent task processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000838
Authors: Caitlin A. Sisk, Yuhong V. Jiang
Institution: University of Minnesota
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W3015795662