TY - JOUR
T1 - Forgetting from lapses of sustained attention
AU - deBettencourt, Megan T.
AU - Norman, Kenneth A.
AU - Turk-Browne, Nicholas
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments This work was supported by NSF fellowship DGE1148900, NIH grant R01 EY021755, and Intel Corporation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of these funding agencies.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by NSF fellowship DGE1148900, NIH grant R01 EY021755, and Intel Corporation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of these funding agencies.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Psychonomic Society, Inc.
PY - 2018/4/1
Y1 - 2018/4/1
N2 - When performing any task for an extended period of time, attention fluctuates between good and bad states. These fluctuations affect performance in the moment, but may also have lasting consequences for what gets encoded into memory. Experiment 1 establishes this relationship between attentional states and memory, by showing that subsequent memory for an item was predicted by a response time index of sustained attention (average response time during the three trials prior to stimulus onset). Experiment 2 strengthens the causal interpretation of this predictive relationship by treating the sustained attention index as an independent variable to trigger the appearance of an encoding trial. Subsequent memory was better when items were triggered from good versus bad attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that sustained attention can have downstream consequences for what we remember, and they highlight the inferential utility of adaptive experimental designs. By continuously monitoring attention, we can influence what will later be remembered.
AB - When performing any task for an extended period of time, attention fluctuates between good and bad states. These fluctuations affect performance in the moment, but may also have lasting consequences for what gets encoded into memory. Experiment 1 establishes this relationship between attentional states and memory, by showing that subsequent memory for an item was predicted by a response time index of sustained attention (average response time during the three trials prior to stimulus onset). Experiment 2 strengthens the causal interpretation of this predictive relationship by treating the sustained attention index as an independent variable to trigger the appearance of an encoding trial. Subsequent memory was better when items were triggered from good versus bad attentional states. Together, these findings suggest that sustained attention can have downstream consequences for what we remember, and they highlight the inferential utility of adaptive experimental designs. By continuously monitoring attention, we can influence what will later be remembered.
KW - Distraction
KW - Episodic memory
KW - Goal-directed attention
KW - Real time
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85020175874&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85020175874&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3758/s13423-017-1309-5
DO - 10.3758/s13423-017-1309-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 28585055
AN - SCOPUS:85020175874
SN - 1069-9384
VL - 25
SP - 605
EP - 611
JO - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
JF - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
IS - 2
ER -