Time of day effects on the use of distraction to minimise forgetting

Ngo, K. W. Joan; Biss, Renée K.; Hasher, Lynn

doi:10.1177/1747021817740808

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(106 reference statements)

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“…A major caveat to this finding is that our sample consisted predominantly of neutral chronotypes ( S2 Table ), whereas studies reporting chronotype-related effects typically sample more densely from extreme morning and evening types [ 34 , 46 , 63 , 64 ]. Though neutral type young adults often fail to show time of day effects [ 59 ], morning testing has been classified as a non-optimal time for both evening and neutral type young adults [ 35 , 91 ], so it is likely the morning constituted a non-optimal time for the vast majority of our sample (we had very few morning types). To examine whether an evening benefit could emerge in this task, future work with strong morning types, which could be achieved by sampling older adults [ 39 , 46 ], would be informative.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the effects of time of day and sleep on generalization

et al. 2021

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Extracting shared structure across our experiences allows us to generalize our knowledge to novel contexts. How do different brain states influence this ability to generalize? Using a novel category learning paradigm, we assess the effect of both sleep and time of day on generalization that depends on the flexible integration of recent information. Counter to our expectations, we found no evidence that this form of generalization is better after a night of sleep relative to a day awake. Instead, we observed an effect of time of day, with better generalization in the morning than the evening. This effect also manifested as increased false memory for generalized information. In a nap experiment, we found that generalization did not benefit from having slept recently, suggesting a role for time of day apart from sleep. In follow-up experiments, we were unable to replicate the time of day effect for reasons that may relate to changes in category structure and task engagement. Despite this lack of consistency, we found a morning benefit for generalization when analyzing all the data from experiments with matched protocols (n = 136). We suggest that a state of lowered inhibition in the morning may facilitate spreading activation between otherwise separate memories, promoting this form of generalization.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining the effects of time of day and sleep on generalization

et al. 2021

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“…However, related research investigating individual differences in cognitive control-a precursor to being able to sustain attention-finds that age groups known to have lower cognitive control tend to learn more about distractors, such as older adults (Amer & Hasher, 2014;Biss, Rowe, Weeks, Hasher, & Murphy, 2018;Campbell, Hasher, & Thomas, 2010;Campbell, Healey, Lee, Zimerman, & Hasher, 2012;Kim, Hasher, & Zacks, 2007;Rowe, Valderrama, Hasher, & Lenartowicz, 2006;Schmitz, Cheng, & De Rosa, 2010;Weeks, Biss, Murphy, & Hasher, 2016) and children (Deng & Sloutsky, 2016;Plebanek & Sloutsky, 2017). Further, younger adults show improved distractor learning during off-peak times of day when they have low cognitive control (Ngo, Biss, & Hasher, 2018). And in a final key example, a correlated flanker paradigm was used to show that younger adults with high trait impulsivity-a trait associated with low control (Cools, Sheridan, Jacobs, & D'Esposito, 2007;Logan, Schachar, & Tannock, 1997)were better at learning the relationships between flankers (which they were instructed to ignore) and goal-relevant targets than those with low impulsivity (Landau, Elwan, Holtz, & Prinzmetal, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pay attention and you might miss it: Greater learning during attentional lapses

et al. 2022

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Attentional lapses have been found to impair everything from basic perception to learning and memory. Yet, despite the well documented costs of lapses on cognition, recent work suggests that lapses might unexpectedly confer some benefits. One potential benefit is that lapses broaden our learning to integrate seemingly irrelevant content that could later prove useful-a benefit that prior research focusing only on goalrelevant memory would miss. Here, we measure how fluctuations in sustained attention influence the learning of seemingly goal-irrelevant content that competes for attention with target content. Participants completed a correlated flanker task in which they categorized central targets (letters or numbers) while ignoring peripheral flanking symbols that shared hidden probabilistic relationships with the targets. We found that across participants, higher rates of attentional lapses correlated with greater learning of the target-flanker relationships. Moreover, within participants, learning was more evident during attentional lapses. These findings address long-standing theoretical debates and reveal a benefit of attentional lapses: they expand the scope of learning and decisions beyond the strictly relevant.

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“…A major caveat to this finding is that our sample consisted predominantly of neutral chronotypes ( Supplementary Table 3), whereas studies reporting chronotype-related effects typically sample more densely from extreme morning and evening types (May, 1998;May et al, 2005;Simor & Polner, 2017;Wieth & Zacks, 2011). Though neutral type young adults often fail to show time of day effects (May & Hasher, 2017), morning testing has been classified as a non-optimal time for both evening and neutral type young adults (Ngo et al, 2018;Ngo & Hasher, 2017), so it is likely the morning constituted a non-optimal time for the vast majority of our sample (we had very few morning types). To examine whether an evening benefit could emerge in this task, future work with strong morning types, which could be achieved by sampling older adults (May et al, 2005;Yoon et al, 1999), would be informative.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Influences of time of day on generalization

Tandoc

Bayda

Poskanzer

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Extracting shared structure across our experiences allows us to generalize our knowledge to novel contexts. How do different brain states influence this ability to generalize? Using a novel category learning paradigm, we assess the effect of both sleep and time of day on generalization that depends on the flexible integration of recent information. Counter to our expectations, we found no evidence that this form of generalization is better after a night of sleep relative to a day awake. Instead, we observed an effect of time of day, with better generalization in the morning than the evening. This effect also manifested as increased false memory for generalized information. In a nap experiment, we found that generalization did not benefit from having slept recently, suggesting a role for circadian rhythms apart from sleep. We found, however, that this time of day effect appears to be sensitive to category structure and to task engagement more generally. We propose that a state of lowered inhibition in the morning may facilitate spreading activation between otherwise separate memories, promoting this form of generalization.

show abstract

Time of day effects on the use of distraction to minimise forgetting

Cited by 11 publications

References 62 publications

Examining the effects of time of day and sleep on generalization

Examining the effects of time of day and sleep on generalization

Pay attention and you might miss it: Greater learning during attentional lapses

Influences of time of day on generalization

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