Shifting attention in cued recall

In category learning, the order in which cases are presented affects how they are learned. Categories that are presented early are encoded in terms of their typical features, while categories that are presented late are coded in terms of their distinctive features. Kruschke (1996) suggested that learners shift their attention to the distinctive features in later learning to avoid interference from earlier cases. In this article, we show that the same principle applies in cued recall. Subjects consecutively studied two lists of word triples, using an anticipation procedure. The second list was composed of triples that contained one of the words from the first list. The pattern of cued recall results was the same as that observed in the category learning task, suggesting that a common mechanism of rapidly shifting selective attention underlies both situations. The results cannot be accounted for by global memory models, which have no mechanism for rapidly shifting selective attention. The paradigm provides a method for investigating selective attention in episodic memory that is not confounded with item characteristics.