Source memory and divided attention: Reciprocal costs to primary and secondary tasks

Source memory, in comparison with item memory, is more sensitive to frontal lesions and may require more strategic processing. Divided attention was u sed to restrict attentional resources and strategic processing on memory ta sks. Participants encoded and retrieved items (i.e., words) and source (i.e ., voice or spatial location) while concurrently performing a finger tappin g (FT) or visual reaction-time (VRT) task. Memory accuracy costs under divi ded attention were greater for retrieval of source than item and were great er with VRT than FT. Similarly, costs to the secondary task were greater wh en concurrently retrieving source as opposed to item and were greater for V RT than PT. Effects were stronger when spatial location was used as the sou rce task. Findings support the idea that processing source information requ ires more attentional resources and effort than processing item information . Furthermore, concurrent performance of VRT produced greater interference with a task that was more dependent on intact frontal functioning and bette r simulated the performance of patients with frontal dysfunction.