Implementation intentions and imagery: individual and combined effects on prospective memory among young adults

Abstract

Prospective memory (PM) has been found to benefit from implementation intentions (i.e., "when I see X, I will do Y"). However, to date, it is unclear whether implementation intentions must incorporate imagery in order to produce a positive effect on PM, or whether the verbal statement alone is sufficient. It is also equivocal whether the use of visual imagery alone improves PM, absent an intentional statement. The present study investigated the individual influences of implementation intentions and imagery, as well as their combined effect, on PM. A total of 64 undergraduates were placed into one of four instructional conditions-read-only, implementation intention, imagery, or combined-and were then tested on a laboratory PM task. The results revealed that participants in the implementation intention, imagery, and combined groups completed significantly more PM tasks than did participants in the read-only group, but they did not differ from one another. Combining implementation intentions and imagery, however, did not improve PM performance over either strategy alone. Additionally, the implementation intention and imagery groups outperformed the read-only group on a secondary ongoing digit detection task. The results of this study suggest that implementation intentions do not require imagery to be effective in improving PM, and that imagery alone has positive effects on PM. Finally, the results of the ongoing digit detection task suggest that the use of implementation intentions and imagery might provide for automatic identification and processing of environmental cues.

Implementation intentions and prospective memory among older adults: An investigation of the role of frontal lobe function

“…The use of implementation intentions, however, could have encouraged most, if not all, high-FL participants to establish a strong associative link, thereby fostering improved PM performance. Recent findings of improved PM performance following implementation intention instruction among undergraduate students (Cohen & Gollwitzer, 2008;Meeks & Marsh, 2010;McDaniel et al, 2008;McFarland & Glisky, 2011) lend additional credence to this argument, as younger adults have been found to possess greater processing resources than older adults (Anderson et al, 1998;Craik & McDowd, 1987). The finding that younger adults can benefit from implementation intentions suggests that although younger adults are capable of developing good plans and making strong associative links, they too may fail to do so at times, and in those cases implementation intentions might encourage engagement in those processes (McDaniel et al, 2008).…”

Visualisation of future task performance improves naturalistic prospective memory for some younger adults living with HIV disease

“…This hypothesis was supported by Brewer and Marsh (2010), who demonstrated that deeper encoding of the cue-to-context link by way of visualization was associated with better accuracy on event-based PM tasks. Further support for the association between brief visualization exercises utilized during the encoding stage of laboratory PM tasks and enhanced event-based PM has been shown in healthy young adults (Paraskevaides et al, 2010; McFarland & Glisky, 2012; Altgassen et al, 2015), older adults (Altgassen et al, 2015) individuals with traumatic brain injury (Potvin et al, 2011), and a mixed clinical sample with memory impairments (Grilli & McFarland, 2011). Visualization has also been associated with improvements in time-based PM in young adults (Altgassen et al, 2015), older adults (Altgassen et al, 2015), adult social drinkers (Griffiths et al, 2012), and individuals with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (Potvin et al, 2011).…”

“…Several studies report beneficial effects of brief visualization and implementation intentions during encoding for event-based PM (Chasteen et al, 2001; Schnitzpahn & Kliegal 2009; Burkard et al, 2014) and time-based PM (Schnitzpahn & Kliegal 2009) across both healthy (e.g., Meeks & Marsh, 2010) and clinical (e.g., Kardiasmenos et al, 2008) populations. To date, the literature regarding the independent and combined effects of visualization and implementation intentions suggests that the effects of these encoding interventions are not synergistic; that is, using both strategies does not necessarily improve PM performance more than using a single strategy alone (e.g., Meeks & Marsh, 2010; McFarland & Glisky, 2012; cf. McDaniel et al, 2008).…”

Time’s up! Involvement of metamemory knowledge, executive functions, and time monitoring in children’s prospective memory performance

“…However, although this indirect relationship between metamemory knowledge, strategy use, and memory performance seems well established when tasks assessing retrospective memory (RM) are used, few studies have examined this relation using tasks that assess prospective memory skills (for recent studies on this topic in adulthood, see Hutchens et al, Running head: Metamemory Knowledge and Prospective Memory 4 2012; McFarland & Glisky, 2012;Rummel & Meiser, 2013). In fact, to our knowledge, no previous study has investigated this specific topic in children.…”