Object-based attention during scene perception elicits boundary contraction in memory

In this study, one group of participants (N = 36) memorized 15 scenes while searching for targets, while a separate group (N = 36) just memorized the scenes. Both groups then drew the scenes from memory with as much object and spatial detail as they could remember. We asked online workers to provide ratings of boundary transformations in the drawings, as well as how many objects they contained and the precision of remembered object size and location. We found that search condition drawings showed significantly greater boundary contraction than drawings of the same scenes in the memorize condition. Search drawings were significantly more likely to contain target objects, and the likelihood to recall other objects in the scene decreased as a function of their distance from the target. These findings suggest that selective attention to a specific object due to a search task at encoding will lead to significant boundary contraction.PMID:38530622 | DOI:10.3758/s13421-024-01540-9

Source: Memory and Cognition - March 26, 2024 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Elizabeth H Hall Joy J Geng Source Type: research