Fig. 1.

Voluntary and involuntary attention each influence memory but in distinct ways. (A) Task schematic. Participants remembered two visual tilted bars to reproduce the orientation of the probed memory item at the end of the delay. The probe was a lasting color change of the central fixation cross, while the retrocue color change was transient. Participants were always required to report the item indicated by the probe. The critical manipulation involved the attentional retrocue that was presented during the memory delay. We used four types of cues, yielding the two-by-two design (Top Right). Pro- and anti-retrocues were each 100% predictive of the relevant (to be probed) memory item but differed in whether their color also matched (pro) or nonmatched (anti) the to-be-probed item. Null-retrocues were not informative but also matched or nonmatched the subsequently probed memory item. (B) Behavioral performance as a function of whether the retrocue was informative (pro and anti) or not (match and nonmatch) and whether it matched the color of the probed memory item (pro and match) or not (anti and nonmatch). (C) Behavioral effects of voluntary and involuntary attentional influences on memory, with negative values corresponding to better performance (i.e., fewer errors and faster reactions) following informative cues (voluntary factor) or color-matching cues (involuntary factor). Error bars represent ±1 SEM, calculated across participants (n = 25). Gray lines depict individual participants.