8/22/2024 Gordon Logan: Is Memory Retrieval the Spotlight of Attention Turned Inward?
CCN Brown Bag
Gordon Logan, PhD
Centennial Professor of Psychology
Date: Thursday, August 22, 2024
Time: 12:10PM-1PM
Location: 316 Wilson Hall
Is Memory Retrieval the Spotlight of Attention Turned Inward?
For several years my research has been driven by the conjecture that memory retrieval is the spotlight of attention turned inward. The primary evidence supporting this conjecture has come from a cued recognition task, in which subjects are given a list of six consonants to remember (e.g., XCDFRT) and then are given a probe containing a letter and a position cue (e.g., ##D### asks whether D is in the third position in the list). We measure the sharpness of the focus of attention on memory with a distance effect calculated from lure trials in which the probe letter was 1 or 2 positions away from the cued position in the list. Response time and error rate are higher for lures 1 position away than for lures 2 positions away, suggesting a sharp focus of attention on the cued item. The results are clear but support for the conjecture that memory retrieval is the spotlight of attention turned inward is narrow. The conjecture should apply broadly to all memory tasks, set sizes, and modalities, and it should apply to “short term” and “long term” memory. In this talk, I report experiments that generalize the distance effect to different tasks, set sizes, modalities, and to “long term” memory. The results suggest that the same spotlight of attention is engaged in all these situations.
Questions? Contact Isabel Gauthier