Category-based and location-based volitional covert attention affect memory at different timescales

Abstract

Feature-based and location-based volitional covert attention 1 are mediated by different mechanisms and affect memory at 2 different timescales 3 Abstract 6Our ongoing subjective experiences, and our memories of those experiences, are shaped by our prior 7 experiences, goals, and situational understanding. These factors shape how we allocate our attentional 8 resources over different aspects of our ongoing experiences. These attentional shifts may happen overtly 9 (e.g., when we change where we are looking) or covertly (e.g., without any explicit physical manifestation). 10Additionally, we may attend to what is happening at a specific spatial location (e.g., because we think 11 something important is happening there) or we may attend to particular features irrespective of their 12 locations (e.g., when we search for a friend's face in a crowd). We ran two covert attention experiments that 13 differed in how long they asked participants to maintain the focus of the features or locations they were 14 attending. Later, the participants performed a recognition memory task for attended, unattended, and 15 novel stimuli. Participants were able to shift the location of their covert attentional focus more rapidly than 16 they were able to shift their focus of covert attention to stimulus features, and the effects of location-based 17 attention on memory were longer-lasting than the effects of feature-based attention.

Sustained Attention and Spatial Attention Distinctly Influence Long-term Memory Encoding

“…The influence of spatial cues can be measured behaviorally and via multivariate analyses of brain data (Foster, Sutterer, Serences, Vogel, & Awh, 2017;Sprague & Serences, 2013). Spatially cueing an item has further been shown to improve long-term memory (Ziman, Lee, Martinez, & Manning, 2019;LaRocque et al, 2015;Turk-Browne, Golomb, & Chun, 2013;Uncapher, Hutchinson, & Wagner, 2011). A largely distinct literature has studied the influence of sustained attention on behavior, traditionally using continuous performance tasks in which participants are required to repeatedly respond (deBettencourt, Keene, Awh, & Vogel, 2019;.…”

Unexpected false feelings of familiarity about faces are associated with increased pupil dilations

“…Throughout the presentation and memory blocks, pupillometry data were collected using an Eyetribe eye-tracking system (Eye Tribe, The EyeTribe, Copenhagen, Denmark). Full experimental and methodological details may be found in Ziman et al (2020).…”

Sustained attention and spatial attention distinctly influence long-term memory encoding

“…Sustained attentional state can be monitored via behavioral performance and via multivariate analyses of brain data (deBettencourt et al, 2015;Esterman et al, 2013;Rosenberg et al, 2016). On the other hand, spatially cueing an item also improves long-term memory (LaRocque et al, 2015;Turk-Browne et al, 2013;Uncapher et al, 2011;Ziman et al, 2019). The influence of spatial cues can be measured behaviorally and via multivariate analyses of brain data (Foster et al, 2017;Sprague & Serences, 2013).…”