The spotlight turned inward: the time-course of focusing attention on memory

Guided by the idea that memory retrieval is selective attention turned inward, we report four experiments examining the time-course of focusing attention on memory. We used a novel episodic flanker task that turns the famous perceptual flanker task inward, presenting memory lists followed by probes that asked whether a cued letter had appeared in the same position in the memory list. Like the perceptual flanker task, we manipulated distance to measure the sharpness of the focus of attention on memory, and compatibility to measure the resistance to distraction. To measure the time-course of focusing, we presented a cue indicating the probed position in the interval between the list and the probe and varied the interval between the cue and the probe (0, 250, 500, 750 ms). The main questions were whether the focus would become sharper and resistance to distraction would become stronger as cue–probe delay increased. Experiments 1a and 1b showed strong distance effects and strong cue–probe interval effects but no reliable interaction between them. Experiments 2a and 2b showed robust compatibility effects and cue–probe interval effects but no interaction between them. Thus, there is no evidence that the sharpness of the focus increases and little evidence that the resistance to distraction improves over time. The robust reduction in response time and slight increase in accuracy with cue–probe interval may reflect the time-course of orienting to the cued position in the memory list prior to focusing on the item it contains.