Remembering intentions: A critical review of existing experimental paradigms

Abstract

Remembering that one intends to do something is distinguished from remembering what one intends to do, and crucial design requirements for research on the former are elucidated. All of the few published studies on remembering intentions are classified into four possible research paradigms and are reviewed for design adequacy in the light of these crucial requirements. It is concluded that the best, but perhaps most difficult to implement, studies in the domain are those conducted under laboratory control in which one must remember to perform a single, repeated or multiple instances of natural-seeming behaviour that one perceives to be entirely irrelevant to the purposes of the study in which one is engaged.

The demands of an ongoing activity influence the success of event-based prospective memory

“…The converse should also be true. The idea of overall allocation of attention is also consistent with the finding that participants who are given a boring ongoing activity will have better prospective memory than those given an engaging ongoing task (Kvavilashvili, 1992).…”

Prospective memory in children: The effects of age and task interruption.

“…Guajardo & Best, 2000). This can be considered an improvement over the single-intention paradigm (see Kvavilashvili, 1992) employed by Meacham and his colleagues in which only a single yes/no response was obtained because there was only one retrieval opportunity. Our paradigm permits the collection of several responses in a single session.…”

The impact of Eysenck's extraversion‐introversion personality dimension on prospective memory

“…Much research has focused on retrospective memory (see e.g. Baddeley, 1997;Baddeley & Wilkins, 1984;Gruneberg, Morris & Sykes, 1988;Harris & Morris, 1984), with prospective memory research expanding over the past 15 years or so (Andrezejewski, Moore, Corvette & Herrmann, 1991;Ellis, 1988;Hitch & Ferguson, 1991;Kvavilashvili, 1987Kvavilashvili, , 1992Meacham & Kushner, 1980;Meacham & Singer, 1977;Wilkins & Baddeley, 1978).…”

“…For example, some researchers have focused on "diary studies", in which participants keep diaries of their ability to remember to carry out future tasks (Meacham & Kushner;1980), or have drawn comparisons between prospective memory and retrospective memory (Andrezejewski, et al, 1991;Hitch & Ferguson, 1991;Kvavilashvili, 1987Kvavilashvili, , 1992Meacham & Singer, 1977;Wilkins & Baddeley, 1978). Others have focused on the specific characteristics of prospective memory, such as strategy use (Harris, 1980), the role of event-cues in prospective remembering (Ellis, Kvavilashvili, & Milne, 1999), Personality and prospective memory 4 developmental aspects of prospective memory (Beal, 1988), as a framework for everyday forgetting (Cavanaugh, Grady, & Perlmutter, 1983;Lovelace & Twohig, 1990;Marsh, Hicks, & Landau, 1998), and age-related changes in prospective remembering (Einstein, McDaniel, Richardson, Guynn & Cunfer, 1995;Mantyla, 1994;Maylor, 1990;.…”