Manipulating Attention, Testing Memory

The relationship between memory and attention is a very complex one and many variables seem to affect this relationship, since attention to the stimuli being encoded will affect posterior recollection. It was hypothesized that auditory attentional manipulations at encoding, using endogenous and exogenous cueing, would have a similar effect to findings in the visual memory system—attentional manipulations have a significant effect on direct but not on indirect tests of memory. Four experiments were conducted using an attentional cueing manipulation technique, where memory was tested using direct and indirect memory tests. The results showed that exogenous and endogenous cueing manipulations have a beneficial effect on memory when measured using a direct memory test, but have little or no effect on memory when assessed with an indirect test of memory. These four experiments conducted clearly demonstrate that attentional cueing manipulations placed during encoding can have a measurable effect on visual and auditory memory when assessed directly.