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Many studies have indicated that executing a secondary task during encoding has little influence on implicit memory (priming effect). However, relatively few studies have discussed the effect of interference on implicit memory during retrieval. Our previous studies found asymmetry between implicit encoding and retrieval processes, with the priming effect disrupted by retrieval interference. Therefore, the present study investigated why and how the priming effect is affected by interference at retrieval. We adopted a dual-task paradigm, with a lexical decision task as the memory task and an odd–even decision task as the interference task. The effect of interference during retrieval was assessed by comparing the performance in the interference condition with that in the full-attention condition. In Experiment 1, we observed that the priming effect was absent in the synchronous retrieval interference condition. In Experiment 2, asynchronous interference was also found to block the priming effect. To verify the assumption that the priming effect is sensitive to attentional resource competition during retrieval, we used two different manipulations (an extended stimulus interval in the dual-task paradigm, Experiment 3, and an interference inhibition manipulation, Experiment 4) known to reduce attentional distraction. In these experiments, the priming effect was protected from interference effects. We suggest that implicit memory retrieval could be regarded as a conditional automatic process that depends on a configuration of the cognitive system by attention and task sets. If the limited resources are occupied by another task, the implicit retrieval process can be impacted.

The functional architecture connecting speech production and reading comprehension remains unclear in multilinguals. This study investigated the cross-modal interaction between these systems in trilinguals to resolve the debate between Age of Acquisition (AoA) and usage frequency. We recruited 144 Uyghur (L1)-Chinese (L2)-English (L3) trilinguals, a population uniquely dissociating acquisition order from social dominance. Participants completed a production-to-comprehension priming paradigm, naming pictures in one language before performing a lexical decision task on translated words. Data were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. Significant cross-language priming confirmed an integrated lexicon, yet a fundamental asymmetry emerged. The top-down influence of production was governed by AoA; earlier-acquired languages (specifically L1) generated more effective priming signals than L2. Conversely, the bottom-up efficiency of recognition was driven by social usage frequency; the socially dominant L2 was the most receptive target, surpassing the heritage L1. The trilingual lexicon operates via \"Two Rules\": a history-driven production system (AoA) and an environment-driven recognition system (Social Usage). This asymmetrical baseline challenges simple bilingual extensions and clarifies the dynamics of multilingual language control.

Background/Objectives: The Adaptive Control Hypothesis posits varying control demands across language contexts in production, but its role in comprehension is underexplored. We investigated if trilinguals, who manage three dual-language contexts (L1–L2, L2–L3, L1–L3), exhibit differential proactive and reactive control demands during comprehension across these contexts. Methods: Thirty-six Uyghur–Chinese–English trilinguals completed an auditory word-picture matching task across three dual-language contexts during EEG recording. We employed behavioral analysis, drift-diffusion modeling, event-related potential (ERP) analysis, and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to examine comprehension efficiency, evidence accumulation, and neural mechanisms. The design crossed context (L1–L2, L2–L3, L1–L3) with trial type (switch vs. repetition) and switching direction (to dominant vs. non-dominant language). Results: Despite comparable behavioral performance, drift-diffusion modeling revealed distinct processing profiles across contexts, with the L1–L2 context showing the lowest comprehension efficiency due to slower evidence accumulation. In the L1–L3 context, comprehension-specific proactive control was indexed by a larger P300 and smaller N400 for L1-to-L3 switches. Notably, no reactive control (switch costs) was observed across any dual-language context. MVPA successfully classified contexts and switching directions, revealing distinct spatiotemporal neural patterns. Conclusions: Trilingual comprehension switching mechanisms differ from production. Reactive control is not essential, while proactive control is context-dependent, emerging only in the high-conflict L1–L3 context. This proactive strategy involves allocating more bottom-up attention to the weaker L3, which, unlike in production, enhances rather than hinders overall efficiency.

This study developed a target detection delayed response task to investigate the impact of target detection on recognition memory. Participants performed a word recognition task accompanied by a target detection task, where they identified targets but refrained from responding (target decision trials); in subsequent trials, they responded to previously detected targets (target response trial), while in distraction trials, they ignored distractions. In Experiment 1, the proportions of target decision, target response, and distraction trials were equal. In Experiment 2, the proportions were 1:1:4. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the recognition response times (RTs) for both “old” and “new” words were significantly longer in the target decision compared to distraction trials, and the recognition RTs for “old” words were significantly shorter in the target response compared with distraction trials. The results of Experiment 2 showed that compared to the distraction trials, in the target decision trials, the recognition rates were significantly lower and the recognition RTs were significantly longer for “old” words, and the recognition RTs were also significantly longer for “new” words. Altogether, target decision interferes with the recognition of both “new” and “old” words, whereas target response promotes the recognition of “old” words.

Adults excel at exerting top-down control to avoid distractions from salient-but-irrelevant stimuli, allowing them to produce the attentional boost effect (ABE) for target decision-making in dual-task processing. It is currently unclear whether ABE in preschool children (5–6 years old) is related to target decision-making or the red effect. Consequently, determining whether preschool children possess the top-down control ability necessary for target selection is impossible. To this end, the attention effect of target selection was measured using target detection and memory tasks. The target and red were separately set, and the target-to-distraction ratio was adjusted. The results indicated a stable target-induced ABE when the target was presented with a low-frequency distraction (1:5). However, the target-induced ABE disappeared, and the red-induced ABE appeared when the target and distraction were presented in the same ratio (1:1). These findings imply that preschool children possess some degree of top-down attention control, but are susceptible to target salience.

Attention and memory are fundamental cognitive processes that closely interact. In the attentional boost effect (ABE), the stimuli that co-occur with targets are remembered better than those that co-occur with distractors in target detection tasks performed during memory encoding. In target detection tasks performed during retrieval, the stimuli that co-occur with targets are recognized as ‘old’ more easily than the stimuli that co-occur with distractors. This study mainly explored the internal mechanism of the effect of target detection on recognition. In Experiment 1 , the full attention (FA; where participants performed only the memory task) condition was used to compare with divided attention (DA; where participants performed target detection while performing memory retrieval) condition to explore the impact of target detection and distraction inhibition on recognition. In Experiment 2 , the proportion of old and new words in the retrieval stage was adjusted to 1:1 to eliminate the possible reaction tendency caused by the high proportion of old words. In Experiment 3 , the presentation time of words was extended to 1.5 s and 3 s to eliminate the possible impact of rapid processing. The results indicated that the effect of target detection on recognition was attributed to both target detection and distraction rejection and is not affected by the ratio of old and new words and the word presentation time. The effect of target detection on recognition may be owing to temporal yoking of the dual tasks, which is different from the effect of target detection on memory encoding.

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.

The Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) refers to the enhancement of memory for concurrently presented background information when target detection is performed during encoding. However, there is still controversy regarding whether ABE-related manipulations can both enhance item-specific and relational processing. Given that resolving this issue can enhance our understanding of the generality of the ABE, we will validate this issue and explore its underlying neural mechanisms. The current study combined the ABE paradigm with the associative recognition paradigm and employed compound pairs and unrelated pairs as memory materials to manipulate the reliance on item-specific or relational information, using a 2 (detection stimulus type: target vs. distractor) × 2 (word pair: compound vs. unrelated) within-subject design. Furthermore, we conducted event-related potential (ERP) and time-frequency analyses (TFA) on participants' electrophysiological data during associative recognition to further explore the underlying neural mechanisms of the ABE. The results showed that, behaviorally, participants remembered more target-paired pairs than distractor-paired pairs for both types of word pairs, demonstrating an ABE. In the ERP results, target word pairs evoked a significant FN400 effect, related to familiarity, whereas distractor word pairs did not evoke this effect. Furthermore, for compound pairs, target pairs evoked larger LPC effects than distractor pairs, which were related to recollection; however, for unrelated pairs, there was no difference in the LPC effect between target and distractor pairs. The TFA results showed that target word pairs induced lower gamma-band activity than distractor word pairs, reflecting familiarity processing. Taken together, target detection enhanced associative memory performance, indicating that ABE-related manipulations can both facilitate item-specific and relational processing. At the neural mechanism level, ABE-related manipulations enhanced the contribution of familiarity in associative recognition, and when the semantic association between items was stronger, ABE-related manipulations further enhanced recollection.

According to the attentional boost effect (ABE), detecting a target in a dual-task paradigm can facilitate memory encoding of concurrently presented stimuli, but the detection stimuli always appears transiently (only for 100 ms). In order to gain deeper insights into the mechanisms behind ABE, it is crucial to investigate whether the brief presentation of the detection stimulus is a necessary prerequisite for generating ABE. To address this issue, the present study manipulated the presentation time of the detection stimulus (500-ms vs. 100 ms) and controlled the study-testing time interval (immediate test vs. 24 h test). It turned out that, the short-duration (100 ms) detection condition produced an ABE similar to that of the long-duration (500 ms) condition at the immediate test, but only the ABE produced by the short-duration condition could be continued until the 24 h test (Experiments 1), and the ABE produced by the long-duration condition disappeared in the 24 h test. Nonetheless, when a retrieval practice session was introduced before the 24 h test, the ABE generated by the long-duration condition also extended to the 24 h  test (Experiment 2). Regarding ERP components, the short-duration detection condition elicited a more negative mean amplitude in the 500–700 ms time window compared to the long detection-duration condition (Experiment 3). This implies that the duration of the detection stimulus likely plays a central role in influencing ABE through its effect on engram stability, with the short-duration condition potentially leading to a more stable engram compared to the long-duration condition.

Previous research has identified asymmetry between implicit encoding and retrieval processes, wherein the priming effect is disrupted by retrieval interference, termed the ‘retrieval divided attention (retrieval-DA) effect’. Additionally, numerous studies have indicated that the priming effect is sensitive to variations in the presentation format of stimuli between the encoding and retrieval phases. Given this context, the current study investigated the origins of the ‘retrieval-DA effect’ by manipulating the perceptual presentation of stimuli. We employed a dual-task paradigm, utilizing an odd-even decision task as the distractor task and a lexical decision task as the memory task. Results from Experiment 1 revealed the presence of the ‘retrieval-DA effect’ when the dual task was executed during retrieval, irrespective of the consistency of stimuli between the encoding and retrieval phases. In Experiment 2, by intensifying the disparity in stimuli presentation between encoding and retrieval through positional adjustments of the distracting stimulus, we observed that the retrieval-DA effect persisted even amidst heightened perceptual inconsistency. We propose that the retrieval-DA effect on implicit memory arises from competition for attentional resources elicited by dual-task operations, rather than the perceptual disparities in stimuli presentation between encoding and retrieval.