Sooner Rather Than Later: Precrastination Rather Than Procrastination

Rosenbaum, David A.; Fournier, Lisa R.; Levy-Tzedek, Shelly; McBride, Dawn M.; Rosenthal, Robert; Sauerberger, Kyle; VonderHaar, Rachel L.; Wasserman, Edward A.; Zentall, Thomas R.

doi:10.1177/0963721419833652

“…Offloading to reduce cognitive effort would be in line with recent evidence on pre-crastination, in that individuals may want to complete a task sooner rather than later to reduce the effort of holding an intention in mind [ 30 ]. Another possibility is that participants may have preferred to use reminders in order to reduce variability in their performance, even if this resulted in a worse overall outcome when considering the mean level of performance [ 11 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

The effect of metacognitive training on confidence and strategic reminder setting

Engeler

¹

,

Gilbert²

2020

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Individuals often choose between remembering information using their own memory ability versus using external resources to reduce cognitive demand (i.e. ‘cognitive offloading’). For example, to remember a future appointment an individual could choose to set a smartphone reminder or depend on their unaided memory ability. Previous studies investigating strategic reminder setting found that participants set more reminders than would be optimal, and this bias towards reminder-setting was predicted by metacognitive underconfidence in unaided memory ability. Due to the link between underconfidence in memory ability and excessive reminder setting, the aim of the current study was to investigate whether metacognitive training is an effective intervention to a) improve metacognitive judgment accuracy, and b) reduce bias in strategic offloading behaviour. Participants either received metacognitive training which involved making performance predictions and receiving feedback on judgment accuracy, or were part of a control group. As predicted, metacognitive training increased judgment accuracy: participants in the control group were significantly underconfident in their memory ability, whereas the experimental group showed no significant metacognitive bias. However, contrary to predictions, both experimental and control groups were significantly biased toward reminder-setting, and did not differ significantly. Therefore, reducing metacognitive bias was not sufficient to eliminate the bias towards reminders. We suggest that the reminder bias likely results in part from erroneous metacognitive evaluations, but that other factors such as a preference to avoid cognitive effort may also be relevant. Finding interventions to mitigate these factors could improve the adaptive use of external resources.

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“…Offloading to reduce cognitive effort would be in line with recent evidence on pre-crastination, in that individuals may want to complete a task sooner rather than later to reduce the effort of holding an intention in mind [30]. Another possibility is that participants may have preferred to use reminders in order to reduce variability in their performance, even if this resulted in a worse overall outcome when considering the mean level of performance [11].…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 75%

The effect of metacognitive training on confidence and strategic reminder setting

Engeler¹,

Gilbert²

2020

Preprint

2

0

1

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Individuals often choose between remembering information using their own memory ability versus using external resources to reduce cognitive demand (i.e. ‘cognitive offloading’). For example, to remember a future appointment an individual could choose to set a smartphone reminder or depend on their unaided memory ability. Previous studies investigating strategic reminder setting found that participants set more reminders than would be optimal, and this bias towards reminder-setting was predicted by metacognitive underconfidence in unaided memory ability. Due to the link between underconfidence in memory ability and excessive reminder setting, the aim of the current study was to investigate whether metacognitive training is an effective intervention to a) improve metacognitive judgment accuracy, and b) reduce bias in strategic offloading behaviour. Participants either received metacognitive training which involved making performance predictions and receiving feedback on judgment accuracy, or were part of a control group. As predicted, metacognitive training increased judgment accuracy: participants in the control group were significantly underconfident in their memory ability, whereas the experimental group showed no significant metacognitive bias. However, contrary to predictions, both experimental and control groups were significantly biased toward reminder-setting, and did not differ significantly. Therefore, reducing metacognitive bias was not sufficient to eliminate the bias towards reminders. We suggest that the reminder bias likely results in part from erroneous metacognitive evaluations, but that other factors such as a preference to avoid cognitive effort may also be relevant. Finding interventions to mitigate these factors could improve the adaptive use of external resources.

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“…Further evidence for pre-action comes from a series of behavioral experiments demonstrating the propensity of participants to start a task early, even at the expense of extra physical effort [67]. The authors termed this unexpected behavior "pre-crastination", and have since replicated this finding in a variety of task conditions, including across animal species (for a review, see [68]). Yet another group of researchers has found another form of pre-action which they have termed "the mere urgency effect" [69].…”

Section: Predictive Control Of Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit task switching in Parkinson’s disease is preserved when on medication

Yaffe

¹

,

Zlotnik

²

,

Ifergane

³

et al. 2020

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People with Parkinson's disease have been shown to have difficulty switching between movement plans. In the great majority of studies, the need to switch between tasks was made explicitly. Here, we tested whether people with Parkinson's disease, taking their normal medication, have difficulty switching between implicitly specified tasks. We further examined whether this switch is performed predictively or reactively. Twenty five people with Parkinson's disease continuously increased or decreased the frequency of their arm movements, inducing an abrupt-but unaware-switch between rhythmic movements (at high frequencies) and discrete movements (at low frequencies). We tested whether that precipitous change was performed reactively or predictively. We found that 56% of participants predictively switched between the two movement types. The ability of people with Parkinson's disease, taking their regular medication, to predictively control their movements on implicit tasks is thus preserved.

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Sooner Rather Than Later: Precrastination Rather Than Procrastination

Cited by 30 publications

References 21 publications

The effect of metacognitive training on confidence and strategic reminder setting

The effect of metacognitive training on confidence and strategic reminder setting

The effect of metacognitive training on confidence and strategic reminder setting

Implicit task switching in Parkinson’s disease is preserved when on medication

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