The attentional boost effect in vocabulary memory

Increasing attentional resources for a task can enhance the performance of a concurrent memory task; this phenomenon is referred to as the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE). This effect is consistently observed in item memory. However, the results are mixed regarding its presence in the two primary types of associative memory with vocabulary as the material: source memory and context memory. Previous research has yet to examine item memory and these two types of associative memory ABE within the same experimental context. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of encoding awareness, encoding frequency, and encoding duration on the ABE in vocabulary memory through three experiments. The results indicate that the ABE for vocabulary item memory and source memory is relatively stable and unaffected by encoding awareness, encoding frequency, and encoding duration. However, the presence of ABE in vocabulary context memory is influenced by encoding frequency. These findings suggest that the ABE in vocabulary memory is affected by the specific type of memory. This result also supports the notion that ABE is not a broad, undifferentiated enhancement of background information but rather involves a specific allocation mechanism.