Searching for importance : focus facilitates memory for words in English

Focus, both prosodic and syntactic, conveys processing advantages in English. We compared recognition memory for words that received syntactic, prosodic, syntactic + prosodic, or no focus. English speakers listened to blocks of sentences, then were presented with words and asked if they remembered them. Words with focus were recognised faster than words without focus, and there was an additive effect, such that words with both focus types were responded to even faster than words that had only prosodic, or syntactic focus. These findings suggest a common mechanism for drawing attention towards focused constituents within an utterance