The internal attentional focus: Studies on the impact on destination memory

Abstract

Abstract To remember to whom we transmit a piece of information, we rely on destination memory, with worse performance occurring when participants transmit personal facts (e.g., my age is ...) compared to interesting ones (e.g., a shrimp's heart is in its head). It seems that when reporting personal information, the internal attentional focus decreases the attentional resources available to associate those facts with recipients, resulting in worse destination memory (Gopie & MacLeod, 2009; Johnson & Jefferson, 2018). Experiment 1 (between-participants design: 41 participants) and Experiment 2 (within-participants design: 30 participants) compared the transmission of personal facts with the transmission of familiar proverbs, with the generation and transmission of personal facts hampering destination memory. However, perhaps the worst performance when transmitting personal facts may be due to the generation of the information, which is absent in the condition where the participants only transmit proverbs. To clarify these results in Experiment 3, 31 participants (1) transmitted and (2) generated and transmitted familiar proverbs, and results showed no differences between the conditions on destination memory. In general, our experiments support the assumption that transmitting personal information leads to worse destination memory, not because the information is generated, but because personal facts drive the attentional focus to the self.