Author: Khena Marie Iyer Swallow

Despite increased demands on attention, responding to a target in a detection task enhances memory for concurrently presented images and words. First documented in 2010, this attentional boost effect phenomenon has been the subject of a growing amount of research. In a new review paper, titled “Grounding the Attentional Boost Effect in Events and the Efficient Brain”, Swallow, Broitman, Riley, and Turker provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on the attentional boost effect, explicitly compare it to the effects of event segmentation on memory, and describe several ways phasic locus coeruleus activity could influence episodic encoding.

2021-2022 was a big year! Congratulations to Dr. Hamid Turker, Dr. Roy Moyal, Anna Lee, and Sanweda Mahagabin for completing their degrees!!

Roy Moyal successfully defended his dissertation, supervised by Prof. Shimon Edelman, titled “Behavioral Context Modulates the Time Course of Visual Processing and Memory Encoding.” Roy’s dissertation featured some awesome work on the Attentional Boost Effect and consciousness. Congratulations to Roy!

How does responding to a target enhance memory? In a new neuroimaging paper titled “Auditory Target Detection Enhances Visual Processing and Hippocampal Functional Connectivity”, Moyal, Turker, Luh, and Swallow found that responding to auditory targets increased activity in the locus coeruleus, increased the amount of information about the simultaneously presented image in visual cortex. and increased connectivity between the hippocampus and visual regions. These results are consistent with the proposal that the attentional boost effect reflects the engagement of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine neuromodulatory system, briefly increasing the uptake of information by perceptual and episodic memory systems.

Hamid Turker successfully defended his dissertation, titled “Acting on Behaviorally Relevant Events and the Impact This Has on Attention and Memory.” His dissertation spanned a broad range of topics, from the attentional boost effect in episodic memory, to fMRI methods, to an examination of two neuromodulatory systems. Congratulations and well done to our newest Ph.D.!

How well can we measure event segmentation? In a new paper published in Behavioral Research Methods, Sasmita and Swallow evaluate the reliability of event segmentation measures across groups of different sizes, and when they perform the task in the lab and online. Results show that a surprisingly small number of participants are needed to distinguish real data from random data, and that this is true for data collected online as well as in the lab. This paper increases confidence in the utility and reliability of the event segmentation task, and provides a valuable resource for anyone interested in using it to study naturalistic perception, memory, and attention.

In her talk titled “Event segmentation relies on information encountered over a narrow time window”, Karen Sasmita presented her work with Dr. Swallow showing that event segmentation is disrupted for approximately 5 seconds when a movie jumps to a discontinuous part of the narrative. Congratulations to Karen for a great (remote) talk at Psychonomics 2021!

Adam Broitman’s paper, “The Effects of Encoding Instruction and Opportunity on the Recollection of Behaviorally Relevant Events” has been accepted for publication at QJEP! The paper demonstrates that the attentional boost effect is present in estimates of both recollection and familiarity even for images that are ignored. The boost to recollection also increases as increases in the opportunity to encode the images increases – either through multiple presentations or longer trials. Target detection therefore enhances a key feature of episodic memory. Nice work Adam!

We posted a new pre-print on methods for identifying and measuring intrinsic functional connectivity of the LC to BioXiv.

Khena presented her work on cross-cultural event segmentation with Qi Wang.