The attraction effect in multialternative decision making reflects the context-dependent violation of rational choice axioms. This study examined the effect of concurrent divided attention in three-alternative visual choice tasks. The concurrent divided attention task is considered to consume the mental resources available for the choice task. There were three conditions: (a) the task-relevant condition, in which the auditory task should consume resources across multiple levels; (b) the task-irrelevant condition, in which the auditory stimuli should consume perceptual resources; (c) and the control condition, in which the resources should not be consumed by auditory stimuli. Thirty-three participants solved 24 hypothetical purchase problems with three alternatives that differed in terms of two attributes. The results indicated that the choice proportion of the target was significantly higher in the task-relevant condition than in the task-irrelevant and control conditions, thereby suggesting that a reduction in cognitive (and/or response) resources is critical for the attraction effect.

The current study examined if bilingual advantages in cognitive control influence memory encoding during a divided attention task. Monolinguals, simultaneous bilinguals, and sequential bilinguals switched between classifying objects and words, then were tested for their recognition memory of stimuli previously seen during the classification task. Compared to bilingual groups, monolinguals made the most errors on the classification task and simultaneous bilinguals committed the fewest errors. On the memory task, however, no differences were found between the three language groups, but significant correlations were found between the number of errors during switch trials on the classification task and recognition memory for both target and non-target stimuli. For bilinguals, their age of second language acquisition partially accounted for the association between attentional control (number of switch errors) and subsequent memory for non-target stimuli only. These results contribute to our understanding of how individual differences in language acquisition influence interactions between cognitive domains.

This study explored the nature of the relationship between attention available at learning and subsequent implicit and explicit memory performance. One hundred neurologically normal subjects rated their liking of target words on a five-point scale. Half of the subjects completed the word-rating task in a full attention condition and the other half performed the task in a divided attention condition. Following administration of the word-rating task, all subjects completed five memory tests, three implicit (category association, tachistoscopic identification, and perceptual clarification) and two explicit (semantic-cued recall and graphemic-cucd recall), each bearing on a different subset of the list of previously presented target words. The results revealed that subjects in the divided attention condition performed significantly more poorly than subjects in the full attention condition on the explicit memory measures. In contrast, there were no significant group differences in performance on the implicit memory measures. These findings suggest that the attention to an episode that is necessary to produce later explicit memory may differ from that necessary to produce unconscious influences. The relationship between implicit memory, neurologic injury, and automatic processes is discussed. (JINS, 1996, 2, 111–125.)

The aim of the present study was to assess the functioning of the different subsystems of working memory after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). A total of 30 patients with severe chronic TBI and 28 controls received a comprehensive assessment of working memory addressing the phonological loop (forward and backward digit span; word length and phonological similarity effects), the visuospatial sketchpad (forward and backward visual spans), and the central executive (tasks requiring simultaneous storage and processing of information, dual-task processing, working memory updating). Results showed that there were only marginal group differences regarding the functioning of the two slave systems, whereas patients with severe TBI performed significantly poorer than controls on most central executive tasks, particularly on those requiring a high level of controlled processing. These results suggest that severe TBI is associated with an impairment of executive aspects of working memory. The anatomic substrate of this impairment remains to be elucidated. It might be related to a defective activation of a distributed network, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. (JINS, 2007, 13, 770–780.)

This study investigated the nature of selective attention deficits after severe closed head injury (CHI). Twenty participants with severe CHI (greater than 1 year postinjury) and 20 matched controls completed search and nonsearch visual selective attention tasks under conditions of low (Experiment 1) and high (Experiment 2) target–distractor similarity. In the search situations, participants searched visual displays that contained 1, 4, or 8 items for the targets. In the nonsearch situations, the location of the targets was visually cued with a peripheral arrow. The results revealed that in both the low and high target–distractor similarity search conditions, CHI participants required a longer time than controls to locate and identify the target. In contrast, in the nonsearch condition, CHI participants were able to successfully ignore irrelevant task information when target–distractor similarity was low. However, when target–distractor similarity was high, CHI participants had more difficulty than controls ignoring the irrelevant information. These results suggest that, in comparison to controls, CHI participants may be at a disadvantage in selective attention situations when visual search is required and when the discriminability between targets and distractors is difficult. (JINS, 1998, 4, 144–159.)