Reading stories while responding to colors: The attentional boost effect for coherent verbal stimuli.

Background stimuli presented with an unrelated target in a detection task are better remembered than those presented with a distractor. This attentional boost effect (ABE) has been shown with randomly sequenced, unrelated background images or words. This study examines whether coherent narratives pr...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 53; no. 7; pp. 2154 - 2172
Autores principales: Oliver, Gavin W., Lee, Vanessa G.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Oct2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Oct2025
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      pub: Springer Nature
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        10.3758/s13421-025-01703-2
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        atl: Reading stories while responding to colors: The attentional boost effect for coherent verbal stimuli.
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        au:
          Oliver, Gavin W.
          Lee, Vanessa G.
        affil:
          https://ror.org/017zqws13 Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, N210 Elliott Hall, 75 East River Road, 55455, Minneapolis, MN, USA
          https://ror.org/017zqws13 Center for Cognitive Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
      su:
        Reading
        Recognition (Psychology)
        Task performance
        Learning
        Attention
        Memory
        Analysis of variance
        Semantics
        Cognition
        Generative artificial intelligence
        T-test (Statistics)
        Narratives
        Word processing
        Color vision
        Descriptive statistics
        Medical coding
        Software architecture
        Evaluation
        Regression analysis
      sug:
        subj:
          Reading
          Recognition (Psychology)
          Task performance
          Learning
          Attention
          Memory
          Analysis of variance
          Semantics
          Cognition
          Computer systems design and related services (except video game design and development)
          Generative artificial intelligence
          T-test (Statistics)
          Narratives
          Word processing
          Color vision
          Descriptive statistics
          Medical coding
          Software architecture
          Evaluation
          Regression analysis
      keyword:
        Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology
        Text processing
        Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology
        Text processing
      ab: Background stimuli presented with an unrelated target in a detection task are better remembered than those presented with a distractor. This attentional boost effect (ABE) has been shown with randomly sequenced, unrelated background images or words. This study examines whether coherent narratives providing meaningful temporal structure interfere with the ABE. Participants studied a series of words for a later memory test while monitoring a concurrent stream of colored squares, pressing the spacebar for target colors and ignoring distractor colors. The words either formed a coherent story (Experiments 1, 3, and 5) or were scrambled in order (Experiments 2 and 4), with a target-to-distractor ratio of 1:1 (Experiments 1–3) or 1:4 (Experiments 4 and 5). Results showed that words paired with the target color were better remembered than those paired with the distractor color, confirming the ABE. However, the ABE was equivalent for coherent and incoherent words, suggesting that narrative coherence did not affect its temporal precision. Contrary to the idea that coherence or temporal relatedness may impose its own temporal structure, the results support the temporal orienting account of the ABE, indicating that target detection triggers a temporally precise orienting response that enhances concurrent task processing. However, constructing a narrative from related words may increase cognitive load, leading to a consistently small ABE across experiments.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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