Ricerc@Sapienza

Researchers interested in the study of implicit (and, to a lesser degree, explicit) memory have frequently used word stem completion (WSC) to measure repetition priming in both healthy and clinical populations. In this task, participants are asked to complete each of several stems (e.g., ele__) with the first word that comes to mind (e.g., elephant). A key problem, however, is that the baseline completion rates of the stems corresponding to the target words must be known in advance, if the researcher want to maximize the possibility to detect sizable priming effects.

We often think of memory in terms of mentally reliving prior events. Such conscious recollection is, of course, an important aspect
of memory and has been a traditional way that researchers have defined and studied memory (James, 1890). However, it is also
clear that we are sometimes influenced by past experiences in the absence of conscious recollection. When we carry out a
well-learned motor skill, for instance, playing the piano or swinging a golf club, we are certainly influenced by past experiences

The Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) refers to the counterintuitive finding that words encoded with to-be-responded targets in a divided-attention condition are remembered better than words encoded with distractors. Previous studies suggested that the ABE-related enhancement of verbal memory depends upon the activation of abstract lexical representations. In the present study, we extend this hypothesis by embedding it in the context of a broader perspective, which proposes that divided attention in the ABE paradigm affects item-specific, but not relational, processing.