TY - JOUR
T1 - The Attentional Boost Effect
T2 - Transient increases in attention to one task enhance performance in a second task
AU - Swallow, Khena M.
AU - Jiang, Yuhong V
PY - 2010/4
Y1 - 2010/4
N2 - Recent work on event perception suggests that perceptual processing increases when events change. An important question is how such changes influence the way other information is processed, particularly during dual-task performance. In this study, participants monitored a long series of distractor items for an occasional target as they simultaneously encoded unrelated background scenes. The appearance of an occasional target could have two opposite effects on the secondary task: It could draw attention away from the second task, or, as a change in the ongoing event, it could improve secondary task performance. Results were consistent with the second possibility. Memory for scenes presented simultaneously with the targets was better than memory for scenes that preceded or followed the targets. This effect was observed when the primary detection task involved visual feature oddball detection, auditory oddball detection, and visual color-shape conjunction detection. It was eliminated when the detection task was omitted, and when it required an arbitrary response mapping. The appearance of occasional, task-relevant events appears to trigger a temporal orienting response that facilitates processing of concurrently attended information (Attentional Boost Effect).
AB - Recent work on event perception suggests that perceptual processing increases when events change. An important question is how such changes influence the way other information is processed, particularly during dual-task performance. In this study, participants monitored a long series of distractor items for an occasional target as they simultaneously encoded unrelated background scenes. The appearance of an occasional target could have two opposite effects on the secondary task: It could draw attention away from the second task, or, as a change in the ongoing event, it could improve secondary task performance. Results were consistent with the second possibility. Memory for scenes presented simultaneously with the targets was better than memory for scenes that preceded or followed the targets. This effect was observed when the primary detection task involved visual feature oddball detection, auditory oddball detection, and visual color-shape conjunction detection. It was eliminated when the detection task was omitted, and when it required an arbitrary response mapping. The appearance of occasional, task-relevant events appears to trigger a temporal orienting response that facilitates processing of concurrently attended information (Attentional Boost Effect).
KW - Attention
KW - Dual-task performance
KW - Memory
KW - Perception
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77249174848&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77249174848&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.003
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 20080232
AN - SCOPUS:77249174848
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 115
SP - 118
EP - 132
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
IS - 1
ER -