Indirect, but not direct, down-regulation of visual long-term memory encoding through strategic biasing of attentional allocation.

Abstract

Visual long-term memory allows us to store a virtually infinite amount of visual information (Brady, Konkle, Alvarez, & Oliva, 2008; Standing, 1973). Despite its massive storage capacity, our ability to encode visual long-term memory fluctuates from moment-to-moment, and for that reason, not every piece of visual information that we wish to encode gets stored into our visual long-term memory. At the same time, we occasionally encounter visual information that we do not wish to remember. To what extent can we control our memory encoding ability at will? Here, we showed that although there are multiple mechanisms to directly up-regulate memory encoding, it is more difficult, if not impossible, to down-regulate memory encoding directly. However, we are capable of down-regulating memory encoding indirectly by biasing attentional allocation away from the encoding of an unwanted stimulus and toward the encoding of a simultaneously encoded item. However, this strategy is effective only if it is exerted prior to perceptual encoding of the unwanted stimulus. Thus, our findings not only support the existence of the biased competition mechanism of voluntary control of memory encoding but also reveals its critical period in indirectly down-regulating memory encoding of unwanted information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).