Factors modulating the effect of divided attention during retrieval of words

Fernandes, Myra A.; Moscovitch, Morris · 2002 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03196429

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Summary

This study investigates the factors that modulate interference effects on episodic memory retrieval under divided attention (DA) conditions. While previous research established that DA significantly disrupts memory encoding, its impact on retrieval has been inconsistent. The authors address this variability by testing whether interference arises from competition for specific representational systems (e.g., phonological or semantic) or from general resource demands. Guided by a neuropsychological model distinguishing between prefrontal cortex-mediated strategic processes and medial temporal lobe-mediated automatic retrieval, the study aims to determine if retrieval interference is material-specific or process-specific. The research comprised three experiments involving undergraduate participants who performed free recall of auditorily presented word lists while simultaneously engaging in visually presented distracting tasks. Experiment 1 compared distracting tasks requiring semantic decisions (animacy) versus phonological decisions (syllable count) on real words, ensuring no memory load was required for the distractor. Experiment 2 contrasted a semantic task involving picture animacy decisions with a phonological task requiring syllable decisions on nonsense words. Experiment 3 replicated the nonsense-word condition and compared it with a picture-based task requiring size judgments. To assess the general resource demands of each distracting task, participants also performed an auditory continuous reaction time (CRT) task concurrently with the distractors. The results demonstrated that distracting tasks involving verbal material produced substantial interference with free recall, regardless of whether the processing was semantic or phonological. In Experiment 1, both animacy and syllable tasks significantly reduced recall performance compared to full-attention conditions, with no significant difference between the two. Experiment 2 revealed that the nonsense-word task produced significantly larger interference than the picture animacy task. Experiment 3 confirmed that the nonsense-word task caused greater interference than the picture size task. Crucially, the auditory CRT data indicated that the verbal distracting tasks were equally resource-demanding, suggesting that the magnitude of memory interference was not driven by general processing load but by the type of representation accessed. The findings conclude that free recall of words is disrupted primarily by competition for phonological or word-form representations during retrieval, and to a lesser extent by competition for semantic representations. This supports the hypothesis that retrieval relies on accessing verbal representational systems, and interference occurs when these systems are simultaneously engaged by a concurrent task. The study challenges the view that retrieval is an automatic, resource-free process, instead indicating that it demands significant processing resources, particularly when verbal representations are involved. These results clarify the locus of interference at retrieval, linking it to specific neural systems responsible for verbal processing rather than general attentional capacity.

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• dual task performance
• auditory