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The effects of the detection stimulus duration on the persistence of the attentional boost effect

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Abstract

According to the attentional boost effect (ABE), detecting a target in a dual-task paradigm can facilitate memory encoding of concurrently presented stimuli, but the detection stimuli always appears transiently (only for 100 ms). In order to gain deeper insights into the mechanisms behind ABE, it is crucial to investigate whether the brief presentation of the detection stimulus is a necessary prerequisite for generating ABE. To address this issue, the present study manipulated the presentation time of the detection stimulus (500-ms vs. 100 ms) and controlled the study-testing time interval (immediate test vs. 24 h test). It turned out that, the short-duration (100 ms) detection condition produced an ABE similar to that of the long-duration (500 ms) condition at the immediate test, but only the ABE produced by the short-duration condition could be continued until the 24 h test (Experiments 1), and the ABE produced by the long-duration condition disappeared in the 24 h test. Nonetheless, when a retrieval practice session was introduced before the 24 h test, the ABE generated by the long-duration condition also extended to the 24 h  test (Experiment 2). Regarding ERP components, the short-duration detection condition elicited a more negative mean amplitude in the 500–700 ms time window compared to the long detection-duration condition (Experiment 3). This implies that the duration of the detection stimulus likely plays a central role in influencing ABE through its effect on engram stability, with the short-duration condition potentially leading to a more stable engram compared to the long-duration condition.

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Data  availability

The data and materials used in this study are available upon request from the corresponding author.

Notes

  1. “Behavioral change” refers to altering the default behavior of the participants. For instance, if the default behavior of the participants is to not respond at all, then requiring them to perform a keypress response in the target condition signifies a behavioral change (Swallow & Jiang, 2013; Swallow et al., 2022).

  2. The supplementary experiment had a similar design to Experiment 1, except for the following two changes: First, the presentation time of the detection stimulus and the presentation time of the encoded stimulus were extended. In the encoding phase, in the 100 ms condition, the hollow circle appeared with the word for 100 ms. Then, the circle disappeared, and the word remained visible for an additional 1400 ms in each trial. In the 1 500 ms condition, the circle appeared with the word for 1500 ms, and then both disappeared. Second, since the supplementary experiment was mainly designed to further verify that the duration of the detection stimulus did not affect the ABE on the immediate test, the 24 h test was not included. The recognition scores on the supplementary experiment replicated the results of Experiment 1 showed that the 1500 ms condition also triggered the ABE in the immediate test [F(1, 30) = 35.643, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.543], and the magnitude of the ABE was similar to the magnitude of the ABE of the 100 ms condition [F(1, 30) = 0.124, p = 0.727]. These data further verified that the duration of the detection stimulus did not affect the ABE on the immediate test.

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  1. Yingfang Meng, Huiru Lin and Siqi Zheng have contributed equally to this study.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Yingfang Meng, Huiru Lin & **n Zhao

  2. Fujian Institute of Education, Fuzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Siqi Zheng

  3. School of Health, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Fajie Huang

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Meng, Y., Huang, F., Lin, H. et al. The effects of the detection stimulus duration on the persistence of the attentional boost effect. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06100-7

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