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Concept information

phenomenon > attention phenomenon > attentional boost effect

Preferred term

attentional boost effect  

Definition

  • An attention phenomenon observed when the detection of targets in a secondary task enhances encoding of co-occurring stimuli (after Mulligan et al., 2023).

Broader concept

Related concepts

Synonym(s)

  • ABE

Belongs to group

Bibliographic citation(s)

  • • Au, R. K. C., & Tang, A. K. M. (2025). The attentional boost effect: Current landscape and future directions. Cognitive Processing, 26(3), 473–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-025-01266-9

    • Document type: literature review

    • Access: closed

  • • Chen, X., Lyu, X., Zhu, L., Cui, Q., Yang, Q., Li, X., Xiang, K., Zheng, C., & Fu, C. (2026). Neural dynamics of attentional boost effect. Brain and Behavior, 16(2), e71250. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.71250

    • Document type: empirical study

    • Access: open

  • • Mulligan, N. W., Spataro, P., & West, J. T. (2023). Memory and attention: A double dissociation between memory encoding and memory retrieval. Cognition, 238, 105509. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105509

    • Document type: empirical study

    • Access: closed

    • Dataset reference: Mulligan, N. (2023, May 25). Attentional Boost Manipulation, Encoding and Retrieval. https://osf.io/dpaxy
  • • Swallow, K., & Jiang, Y. (2013). Attentional load and attentional boost: A review of data and theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00274

    • Document type: empirical study

    • Access: open

  • • Swallow, K. M., & Jiang, Y. V. (2010). The Attentional Boost Effect: Transient increases in attention to one task enhance performance in a second task. Cognition, 115(1), 118–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.12.003

    • Document type: empirical study

    • Access: closed

  • • Swallow, K. M., & Jiang, Y. V. (2011). The role of timing in the attentional boost effect. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73(2), 389–404. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-010-0045-y

    • Document type: empirical study

    • Access: open

Creator

  • Frank Arnould

Has study method(s)

Example

  • For example, participants learn faces while performing a target detection task (pressing a button when a blue square appears next to a face and not pressing the button when the square is of another color). Long-term memory for faces is improved when they are encoded with the target (blue square).

In other languages

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/P66-G1863DQM-7

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