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Updated: Aug 2, 2026

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets
Published on: December 5, 2014
Is there implicit memory without attention? A reexamination of task demands in Eich's (1984) procedure
N L Wood1, M A Stadler, N Cowan
1Department of Psychology, University of Missouri, Columbia 65211, USA.
Abstract:
The relation between memory and attention has been of long-standing interest. Eich (1984) made an important discovery of implicit but not explicit memory for contextually determined homophones (e.g., taxi-FARE) presented in a channel to be ignored within a selective listening procedure. However, his slow rate of presentation of shadowing task materials may have allowed frequent attention shifts to the allegedly ignored channel. With a direct replication of Eich's timing parameters, we reproduced his results, but when the attended channel was presented twice as fast as Eich's, implicit memory for the to-be-ignored words vanished. Our results contradict claims of extensive semantic processing of unattended auditory information in this task.
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