ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B

Acta Psychologica Sinica ›› 2021, Vol. 53 ›› Issue (5): 469-480.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00469

• Reports of Empirical Studies • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Attentional boost effect in conceptual implicit memory

MENG Yingfang1(), DONG Yueqing1, CHEN Quan1,2   

  1. 1School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350117, China
    2Mental Health and Life Education Center, Communication University of Zhejiang, Hangzhou 310018, China
  • Received:2020-02-27 Published:2021-05-25 Online:2021-03-29
  • Contact: MENG Yingfang E-mail:175695016@qq.com
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation youth program(31800906);general program of Fujian Natural Science Foundation in 2018(2018j01719)

Abstract:

Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) was first defined bySwallow and Jiang (2010) who discovered that target detection in the encoding phase promotes the performance of concurrently presented background information in subsequent retrieval. It has been found that ABE does not appear in the conceptual implicit test which suggests that target detection mainly promotes the perceptual processing of background information, rather than semantic processing. This study manipulated the types of encoding processing of background information (perceptual processing or conceptual processing) through three experiments. It was found that ABE appeared in subsequent implicit conceptual tests when the background information was processed conceptually at the same time as target detection. Conversely, ABE appeared in the subsequent perceptual implicit test rather than conceptual implicit test when perceptual processing was performed on the background information. These results showed that target detection can promote both perceptual processing and semantic processing of background information, but ABE would be produced only when the encoding process of background information under target detection was consistent with the retrieval process that subsequent implicit tests relied on.

Key words: attentional boost effect, implicit memory, conceptual processing, perceptual processing