Attention learning and memory: the fluency of processing

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To be able to attend, learn, and remember, we must possess a set of relevant cognitive skills that permit us to select, encode, and retrieve information.  These overarching skills are made up of processes, some more basic (playing central roles in many skills) and others more specialized.  The experience-based fluency of operation of these processes under a wide variety of conditions determines how well we process information.     Research on attention, learning, and memory relies heavily on interference and facilitation as fundamental clues to the operation of cognitive processes.  Irrelevant information must be ignored; if not, interference (slowing and errors) results.  Previous relevant processing, and the resulting availability of related information, assists current processing; this is expressed as facilitation.  This proposal describes a continuing program of research having as its goal the understanding of fluent information processing.     The proposed attention research examines our ability to restrict attention to one dimension in the face of competing information from another dimension that is fluently (automatically) processed.  New studies will expand on my longstanding work on the classic Stroop colour-word interference task.     The proposed learning research will open a new domain of research in my program, bridging attention and memory.  The focus will be on implicit learning:  learning beneath awareness.  New work on the learning and relearning of implicit and even unattended associations will be featured.     The proposed memory research features the contrast between explicit memory and implicit memory:  remembering with vs without awareness.  Proposed experiments include new work on "the production effect":  improved explicit (but not implicit) memory for information spoken aloud during study.     In the longer term, the proposed new research and the corresponding theoretical developments will lead to a better overall understanding of the fluent processing underlying attention, learning, and memory, and to the development of practical skills -- such as improved study techniques -- for their optimization in everyday life.