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Episodic memory for spatial context biases spatial attention

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Abstract

The study explores the bottom-up attentional consequences of episodic memory retrieval. Individuals studied words (Experiment 1) or pictures (Experiment 2) presented on the left or on the right of the screen. They then viewed studied and new stimuli in the centre of the screen. One-second after the appearance of each stimulus, participants had to respond to a dot presented on the left or on the right of the screen. The dot could follow a stimulus that had been presented, during the study phase, on the same side as the dot (congruent condition), a stimulus that had been presented on the opposite side (incongruent condition), or a new stimulus (neutral condition). Subjects were faster to respond to the dot in the congruent compared to the incongruent condition, with an overall right visual field advantage in Experiment 1. The memory-driven facilitation effect correlated with subjects’ re-experiencing of the encoding context (R responses; Experiment 1), but not with their explicit memory for the side of items’ presentation (source memory; Experiment 2). The results indicate that memory contents are attended automatically and can bias the deployment of attention. The degree to which memory and attention interact appears related to subjective but not objective indicators of memory strength.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Antonio Vallesi and Marilyne Ziegler for helpful discussions, and Augusto Ciaramelli for drawing Fig. 1. This research was funded by a Marie Curie individual fellowship to EC and a CIHR (Canada) grant to MM.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rotman Research Institute, 3560 Bathurst Street, Toronto, ON, M6A 2E1, Canada

    Elisa Ciaramelli & Morris Moscovitch

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Olivia Lin & Morris Moscovitch

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  1. Elisa Ciaramelli
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  2. Olivia Lin
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  3. Morris Moscovitch
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Correspondence to Elisa Ciaramelli.

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Ciaramelli, E., Lin, O. & Moscovitch, M. Episodic memory for spatial context biases spatial attention. Exp Brain Res 192, 511–520 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1548-9

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