Effects of divided attention (DA) during encoding on later memory performance are widely documented. However, the precise nature of these effects on underlying memory representations and subsequent retrieval processes has not been thoroughly investigated. Here, we examined whether DA at encoding would disrupt young adults’ ability to remember associations in episodic memory at highly specific levels of representation (i.e., verbatim memory), or whether the effects of DA extend also to gist memory for associations. Two groups of participants (one under full attention, one under DA) studied face–scene pairs. The DA group simultaneously completed an auditory choice reaction-time task during encoding. Following either a short or long delay, participants were tested on their ability to discriminate intact face–scene pairs from recombined pairs that were either highly similar, less similar, or completely unrelated to originally studied pairs. The DA group performed more poorly than the full attention participants at correctly classifying most types of test pairs at both delays, and results from a multinomial-processing-tree model demonstrated that participants who encoded associations under DA experienced deficits in both specific and gist memory retrieval. We also compared the DA group to full attention older adults who were tested with the same paradigm (Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, Psychological Science, 31[3], 316–331, 2020). The DA group had lower estimates of gist retrieval than the older adults but similar estimates of verbatim memory. These results suggest that DA at encoding disrupts episodic memories at multiple levels of representation, in contrast to age-related effects, which are restricted only to the highest levels of specificity.

编码期间的注意力分散 (DA) 对后期记忆性能的影响已被广泛记录。然而，这些影响对潜在记忆表示和随后的检索过程的确切性质尚未得到彻底研究。在这里，我们检查了编码时的 DA 是否会破坏年轻人在高度特定的表征水平（即逐字记忆）中记忆情景记忆中关联的能力，或者 DA 的影响是否也延伸到关联的主旨记忆。两组参与者（一组在全神贯注下，一组在 DA 下）研究了面部-场景对。DA 组在编码过程中同时完成了一项听觉选择反应时间任务。在短暂或长时间延迟之后，测试参与者将完整的面部场景对与高度相似、不太相似或与最初研究的对完全无关的重组对区分开来的能力。DA 组在两次延迟正确分类大多数类型的测试对方面的表现比全注意力参与者差，多项处理树模型的结果表明，在 DA 下编码关联的参与者在特定和主旨记忆检索方面都存在缺陷. 我们还将 DA 组与使用相同范式测试的全注意力老年人进行了比较（Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, DA 组在两次延迟正确分类大多数类型的测试对方面的表现比全注意力参与者差，多项处理树模型的结果表明，在 DA 下编码关联的参与者在特定和主旨记忆检索方面都存在缺陷. 我们还将 DA 组与使用相同范式测试的全注意力老年人进行了比较（Greene & Naveh-Benjamin, DA 组在两次延迟正确分类大多数类型的测试对方面的表现比全注意力参与者差，多项处理树模型的结果表明，在 DA 下编码关联的参与者在特定和主旨记忆检索方面都存在缺陷. 我们还将 DA 组与使用相同范式测试的全注意力老年人进行了比较（Greene & Naveh-Benjamin,心理科学, 31 [3], 316–331, 2020)。DA 组对要点检索的估计低于老年人，但对逐字记忆的估计相似。这些结果表明，与年龄相关的效应相比，编码时的 DA 在多个表示水平上破坏了情节记忆，后者仅限于最高水平的特异性。