School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, P.R. China.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 Mar;74(3):510-522. doi: 10.1177/1747021820969037. Epub 2020 Nov 4.
The attentional boost effect (ABE) is a phenomenon in which in some dual tasks, increased attention to target detection causes an increase in memory performance related to items paired with the target. However, in previous studies concerning the ABE, the detection task objects usually reflected perceptual information. Whether the ABE could be observed if the task involves detecting semantic information is unclear. To answer this question, the present study adopted the classic dual-task paradigm of the ABE. Arabic numerals were used as semantic information stimuli in the detection tasks, and the degree of semantic processing in the detection task gradually increased over three experiments. The results showed that target detection with semantic information (i.e., digits) triggered the ABE (Experiment 1) and that the ABE was also generated under the semantic judgement-based detection task (i.e., odd-even detection task) regardless of whether the detection task used a single-target stimulus (Experiment 2) or a multi-target stimulus (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that an increased semantic load before the target decision in the detection task does not affect the ABE, and both perceptual detection and semantic detection can trigger the ABE.
注意促进效应（ABE）是一种现象，即在某些双任务中，对目标检测的注意力增加会导致与目标配对的项目的记忆性能提高。然而，在之前关于 ABE 的研究中，检测任务的对象通常反映了知觉信息。如果任务涉及检测语义信息，是否可以观察到 ABE 尚不清楚。为了回答这个问题，本研究采用了 ABE 的经典双任务范式。阿拉伯数字在检测任务中被用作语义信息刺激，并且在三个实验中，检测任务中的语义处理程度逐渐增加。结果表明，具有语义信息（即数字）的目标检测引发了 ABE（实验 1），并且无论检测任务使用单个目标刺激（实验 2）还是多个目标刺激（实验 3），基于语义判断的检测任务（即奇偶检测任务）也会产生 ABE。这些发现表明，在检测任务中的目标决策之前增加的语义负荷不会影响 ABE，并且知觉检测和语义检测都可以触发 ABE。
