Task interference from prospective memories covaries with contextual associations of fulfilling them

Abstract

One of the many important functions of memory is to store intentions about future plans, goals, and activities. Intending to refill a prescription, planning a trip to the grocery store, setting aside a future time to write, read, or work on a hobby, or forming the intention to give someone a piece of information are everyday examples of what has been termed prospective memory in the scientific literature. The label connotes a forward-looking component to the memory, and it was intended to contrast directly with retrospective memory, for activities and events that occurred in the past. Although people form a vast array of prospective memories that vary along many dimensions (see Kvavilashvili & Ellis, 1996), perhaps the most often cited distinction contrasts event-based with time-based prospective memory (see, e.g., Einstein & McDaniel, 1990;Park, Hertzog, Kidder, Morrell, & Mayhorn, 1997). In event-based prospective memory, people allow an environmental cue to remind them to complete an intention. For example, the sight of a convenience store might bring to mind the intention to replenish milk, or the sight of a friend might trigger t he intention to relate a novel story. In time-based prospective memory, people plan to execute an activity either at a predetermined time, such as attending a meeting at work, or after a specific period of time has elapsed, such as taking food out of the oven before it is overcooked. Despite the fact that neither type of intention is more or less important than the other, event-based prospective memory has received much more scientific scrutiny than time-based memory (see . Consequently, the theories concerning event-based memory are more developed, as are the various laboratory techniques used to study it.The present study explores a timely issue in the field of prospective memory-namely, the degree to which possessing a prospective memory interferes with an ongoing activity. In standard laboratory instantiations of eventbased tasks, people are engaged in a cognitive activity such as rating words on various dimensions, naming pictures of famous faces, performing a lexical decision task, reading a passage, and so forth (see, e.g., Ellis, Kvavilashvili, & Milne, 1999;Marsh, Hicks, & Watson, 2002;Maylor, 1996Maylor, , 1998McDaniel, Robinson-Riegler, & Einstein, 1998). Prior to commencing the task, they are asked to respond to a cue, such as a specific word or a class of items (e.g., words denoting animals), with a special action that indicates they remembered their intention. This laboratory paradigm is intended to simulate real-world situations in 1037Copyright 2006 Psychonomic Society, Inc.We thank Meghan Coyle, Austin Cope, Becky Swint, and Mandy Howard for their dedicated help in collecting the data. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to R. L. Marsh, Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-3013 (e-mail: rlmarsh@uga.edu). One of the current issues in the field of prospective memory concerns whether having an intention produces a co...

Evidence for spontaneous retrieval of suspended but not finished prospective memories

“…The findings of no monitoring or cue rehearsal during tasks that do not require a prospective memory task to be performed converge with Marsh, Hicks, and Cook's (2006) results that individuals are able to suspend allocating attention to monitoring for cues or rehearsing the prospective memory intention until the context is one in which the prospective memory task needs to be performed. Einstein et al's (2005) approach to examining spontaneous retrieval seems promising, but their findings may have been unique to their particular procedural features.…”

“…One block of trials consisted of a lexical decision task, during which participants were told that their sole concern was to perform the task as quickly and accurately as possible. Past research suggests that attentional resources will not be allocated to maintaining or retrieving the prospective memory during the intervals in which the prospective memory task is not to be performed (lexical decision in the present case; see Marsh et al, 2006). 2 The key feature is that the prospective memory target words (as well as matched control words) were presented several times during the lexical decision task.…”

“…Therefore, the participants should not have been confused about whether the lexical decision task also included a prospective memory task. Under such conditions, the participants typically do not monitor for the target in the phase in which the prospective memory task is not expected (see Marsh et al, 2006, for strong evidence on the point).…”

A diffusion model analysis of task interference effects in prospective memory

“…If having the intention to respond to a PM cue requires attentional resources, then fewer resources should be available to perform the ongoing task. In line with this rationale, ongoing-task performance is often significantly reduced (mostly in terms of slowing in reaction times [RTs]), when participants perform an ongoing task while holding an intention, as compared to participants who perform the ongoing task alone (Cohen, Jaudas, & Gollwitzer, 2008;Marsh, Hicks, & Cook, 2006b). The degree to which such task interference occurs depends on characteristics of both the ongoing task and the PM task such as the complexity of the ongoing task (Einstein, McDaniel, Williford, Pagan, & Dismukes, 2003) and the time of the occurrence of the PM cue (McBride, Beckner, & Abney, in press).…”

Social importance enhances prospective memory: evidence from an event-based task

“…Strategic monitoring is typically only activated when the appropriate context to perform a prospective memory task is reached (cf. Loft, Smith, & Bhaskara, 2011;Marsh, Hicks, & Cook, 2006;Meier et al, 2006). In an activity-based task, no interruption of the ongoing task is necessary because the appropriate moment is by definition signaled by the end of an activity.…”