The Attentional Boost Effect: Transient increases in attention to one task enhance performance in a second task

Swallow, Khena M.; Jiang, Yuhong

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.003

Cited by 166 publications

(389 citation statements)

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“…However, the opposite pattern was observed: Images that were presented at the same time as a target were recognized better than images presented at the same time as a distractor. This finding has been replicated with a variety of encoding and detection stimuli (Swallow & Jiang, 2010). It has been observed in measures of long-term memory, source memory, and short-term memory (Lin, Pype, Murray, & Boynton, 2010;Makovski, Swallow, & Jiang, 2011;Swallow & Jiang, 2010.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…This finding has been replicated with a variety of encoding and detection stimuli (Swallow & Jiang, 2010). It has been observed in measures of long-term memory, source memory, and short-term memory (Lin, Pype, Murray, & Boynton, 2010;Makovski, Swallow, & Jiang, 2011;Swallow & Jiang, 2010. Because these data suggest that increasing attention to the detection task when a target appears boosts performance on the second encoding task, this phenomenon has been referred to as the attentional boost effect (Swallow & Jiang, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…It has been observed in measures of long-term memory, source memory, and short-term memory (Lin, Pype, Murray, & Boynton, 2010;Makovski, Swallow, & Jiang, 2011;Swallow & Jiang, 2010. Because these data suggest that increasing attention to the detection task when a target appears boosts performance on the second encoding task, this phenomenon has been referred to as the attentional boost effect (Swallow & Jiang, 2010). Similar effects have been observed in perceptual learning, with targets in one stimulus stream increasing later sensitivity to the perceptual features of taskirrelevant unattended background stimuli (task-irrelevant perceptual learning; Seitz & Watanabe, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some images were presented at the same time as targets, and other images were presented at the same time as distractors. This task required participants to divide attention across two tasks and required greater attention when a target appeared for the detection task (Duncan, 1980;Swallow & Jiang, 2010;Wolfe, Butcher, Lee, & Hyle, 2003). As a result, interference should have been greatest for those images that were presented at the same time as the target in the second stimulus stream.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In one set of studies, participants were asked to encode a series of briefly presented images into memory. At the same time, they performed a target detection task on a second stimulus stream (e.g., searching for a white square in a stream of black squares; Swallow & Jiang, 2010). Some images were presented at the same time as targets, and other images were presented at the same time as distractors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Goal-relevant events need not be rare to boost memory for concurrent images

Swallow

Jiang

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

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In the attentional boost effect, memory for images presented at the same time as unrelated targets (e.g., an orange square) is enhanced relative to images presented at the same time as distractors (e.g., a blue square). One difficulty in understanding the nature of this enhancement is that, in most experiments demonstrating the attentional boost effect, targets have been less common than distractors. As a result, the memory enhancement associated with target detection may have been driven by differences in the relative frequencies of targets and distractors. In four experiments, participants encoded images into memory at the same time that they monitored a second, unrelated stimulus stream for targets. In some conditions, targets were as common as distractors (1:1 ratio); in others, targets were rare (1:6 ratio). The attentional boost effect was present when the target and distractor frequencies were equated, ruling out oddball and distinctiveness effects as explanations. These effects were observed when targets required a buttonpress and when they were covertly counted. Memory enhancements were not observed for images presented at the same time as rare distractor stimuli. We concluded that selectively attending to events that require an overt or covert response enhances the processing of concurrent information.Keywords Attention . Long-term memory . Dual-task processing . Attentional boost effectThe modern world is full of situations in which it is necessary to divide attention across multiple sources of information and to perform more than one task at once, often over long periods of time. The attentional demands of such tasks are likely to vary over time, both as a result of changes in task difficulty and in response to the need to selectively attend to a particular object. Decades of work on dual-task performance and selective attention has provided clear and robust evidence that dividing attention across multiple tasks and stimuli impairs performance

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 57%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Goal-relevant events need not be rare to boost memory for concurrent images

Swallow

Jiang

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Public Objects and Private Qualia

Hoffman

2013

Handbook of Experimental Phenomenology

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The modulation of temporal predictability on attentional boost effect

Pan,

Fu,

et al. 2024

Brain and Behavior

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IntroductionThe attentional boost effect, characterized by better memory for background scenes coinciding with a detection target than a nontarget, is believed to stem from a temporary increase in attentional capacity at the time of an acute behavior‐related event occurring. Sisk and Jiang's study found that the attentional boost effect also occurs when the target's appearance was predictable. Unfortunately, the duration of the predictive interval in Sisk and Jiang's study was fixed. Since different predictive intervals had different weakening degrees to the acuteness of the target, this fixed duration hindered further investigation into the impact of different levels of predictability on the attentional boost effect.MethodUsing the encoding‐recognition paradigm and the remembering/knowing paradigm, and setting target stimuli with different predictive interval in target detection tasks, the current study aimed to explore the influence of varying the duration of the predictive interval on the attentional boost effect.ResultsThe attentional boost effect was observed only in the short and medium predictive duration conditions, but not in the long predictive duration condition. Moreover, as the duration of the predictive interval increased, participants’ memory performance on target‐paired words gradually declined, while their memory performance on distractor‐paired and baseline‐paired words gradually improved.ConclusionsPredictability may alter the task demands, allowing participants to more effectively allocate attentional resources to the two tasks at hand.

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The Attentional Boost Effect: Transient increases in attention to one task enhance performance in a second task

Cited by 166 publications

References 52 publications

Goal-relevant events need not be rare to boost memory for concurrent images

Goal-relevant events need not be rare to boost memory for concurrent images

Public Objects and Private Qualia

The modulation of temporal predictability on attentional boost effect

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