Does Incidental Auditory Learning Facilitate Memory-guided Attention? A Behavioural and Electroencephalogram (EEG) Study

Can implicit associations facilitate auditory target detection? Participants were exposed to audio-clips (half included a lateralized pure tone). Participants then took a surprise memory test in which they detected a faint lateralized tone embedded in each audio-clip and indicated if the clip was (i) old or new; (ii) recollected or familiar, and; (iii) if the tone was on the left, right, or not present when they heard the clip at study. The results show good explicit memory for the clip, but not for tone location. Target detection was faster for old than for new clips but did not vary according to the target-context associations. Neuro-electric activity revealed an old-new effect at midline-frontal sites as well as a significant difference between clips that had been associated with the location of the target compared to those that were not. The implications of these findings in the context of memory-guided attention are discussed.M.A