Does the strength of representations in long-term memory (LTM) depend on which type of attention is engaged? We tested participants’ memory for objects seen during visual search. We compared implicit memory for two types of objects—related-context nontargets that grabbed attention because they matched the target defining feature (i.e., color; top-down attention) and salient distractors that captured attention only because they were perceptually distracting (bottom-up attention). In Experiment 1, the salient distractor flickered, while in Experiment 2, the luminance of the salient distractor was alternated. Critically, salient and related-context nontargets produced equivalent attentional capture, yet related-context nontargets were remembered far better than salient distractors (and salient distractors were not remembered better than unrelated distractors). These results suggest that LTM depends not only on the amount of attention but also on the type of attention. Specifically, top-down attention is more effective in promoting the formation of memory traces than bottom-up attention.

长期记忆（LTM）中表征的强度是否取决于所涉及的注意力类型？我们测试了参与者对视觉搜索过程中看到的物体的记忆。我们比较了两种类型的对象的内隐记忆：相关上下文的非目标吸引了注意力，因为它们与目标定义特征（即颜色；自上而下的注意力）相匹配，而显着的干扰物仅因为它们在感知上分散注意力而吸引了注意力（自下而上）注意力）。在实验1中，显着干扰物闪烁，而在实验2中，显着干扰物的亮度交替。重要的是，显着的和相关上下文的非目标产生了相同的注意力捕获，但相关上下文的非目标比显着的干扰项更容易被记住（并且显着的干扰项并不比不相关的干扰项被记住得更好）。这些结果表明，LTM 不仅取决于注意力的数量，还取决于注意力的类型。具体来说，自上而下的注意力比自下而上的注意力更能有效地促进记忆痕迹的形成。