Contrastive Verbal Guidance: A Beneficial Context for Attention To Events and Their Memory?

Abstract

Research suggests that presenting an action via multimodal stimulation (verbal and visual) enhances its perception. To highlight this, in most studies, assertive instructions are generally presented before the occurrence of the visual subevent(s). However, verbal instructions need not always be assertive; they can also include negation to contrast the present event with a prior one, thereby facilitating processing—a phenomenon known as contextual facilitation. In our study, we investigated whether using negation to guide an action sequence facilitates action perception, particularly when two consecutive subactions contrast with each other. Stimuli from previous studies on action demonstration were used to create (non)contrastive actions, that is, a ball following noncontrastive and identical (Over–Over or Under–Under) versus contrastive and opposite paths (Over–Under or Under–Over) before terminating at a goal location. In Experiment 1, either an assertive or a negative instruction was provided as verbal guidance before onset of each path. Analyzing data from 35 participants, we found that, whereas assertive instructions facilitate overall action recall, negating the later path for contrastive actions is equally facilitative. Given that action goal is the most salient aspect in event memory due to goal-path bias in attention, a second experiment was conducted to test the effect of multimodal synchrony on goal attention and action memory. Experiment 2 revealed that when instructions overlap with actions, they become more tailored—assertive instructions effectively guide noncontrastive actions, while assertive–negative instruction particularly guides contrastive actions. Both studies suggest that increased attention to the goal leads to coarser perception of midevents, with action-instruction synchrony modulating goal bias in real-time event apprehension to serve distinct purposes for action conceptualization. Whereas presenting instructions before subactions attenuates goal attention, overlapping instructions increase goal attention and reveal the selective roles of assertive and negative instructions in guiding contrastive and noncontrastive actions.