ArticleBMC psychology2026
Target detection enhances relational processing of background items: evidence from associative recognition paradigms and EEG.
Article in BMC psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) refers to the enhancement of memory for concurrently presented background information when target detection is performed during encoding. However, there is still controversy regarding whether ABE-related manipulations can both enhance item-specific and relational processing. Given that resolving this issue can enhance our understanding of the generality of the ABE, we will validate this issue and explore its underlying neural mechanisms.
methodsThe current study combined the ABE paradigm with the associative recognition paradigm and employed compound pairs and unrelated pairs as memory materials to manipulate the reliance on item-specific or relational information, using a 2 (detection stimulus type: target vs. distractor) × 2 (word pair: compound vs. unrelated) within-subject design. Furthermore, we conducted event-related potential (ERP) and time-frequency analyses (TFA) on participants' electrophysiological data during associative recognition to further explore the underlying neural mechanisms of the ABE.
resultsThe results showed that, behaviorally, participants remembered more target-paired pairs than distractor-paired pairs for both types of word pairs, demonstrating an ABE. In the ERP results, target word pairs evoked a significant FN400 effect, related to familiarity, whereas distractor word pairs did not evoke this effect. Furthermore, for compound pairs, target pairs evoked larger LPC effects than distractor pairs, which were related to recollection; however, for unrelated pairs, there was no difference in the LPC effect between target and distractor pairs. The TFA results showed that target word pairs induced lower gamma-band activity than distractor word pairs, reflecting familiarity processing.
conclusionsTaken together, target detection enhanced associative memory performance, indicating that ABE-related manipulations can both facilitate item-specific and relational processing. At the neural mechanism level, ABE-related manipulations enhanced the contribution of familiarity in associative recognition, and when the semantic association between items was stronger, ABE-related manipulations further enhanced recollection.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.