Moussa Kousa¹, Brad Wyble¹; ¹The Pennsylvania State University

Attribute amnesia (AA) revises the conventional understanding that attention is the key determinant in how information is retained in memory. It demonstrates that participants can fail to remember an attended attribute, such as the color identifying a target, immediately after using that same attribute to detect the target. The AA effect is believed to reflect a cognitive efficiency mechanism. We theorize that reporting a single feature in typical AA tasks does not require linking it to a specific object token, leading to the other features of the target stimulus being discarded from memory. This project modified the traditional AA task by requiring participants to report two target attributes, aiming to promote their integration into a unified object token and potentially bypass the mechanisms underlying AA. The study included two experiments: a control and an experimental condition. Both used bar stimuli defined by color, texture, and orientation. In the control condition, participants reported one attribute in pre-surprise trials and were tested on another in a surprise trial, following standard AA procedures. The experimental condition differed by requiring participants to report two attributes in pre-surprise trials. We hypothesized that the attribute amnesia effect, marked by improved accuracy from the surprise to the first control trial, would occur in the control experiment but not in the experimental condition. However, the results indicate a statistically significant improvement in accuracy from the surprise trial to the first control trial, demonstrating an attribute amnesia effect in both conditions—though less pronounced than what is typically observed in standard AA tasks. Closer analysis of sub-conditions revealed that when color served as the key attribute, the AA effect was absent. This finding suggests a potentially unique property of color for targets that are large textured shapes, which contrasts with previous research, which found an AA effect with color.