The cost of remembering to remember in event-based prospective memory: Investigating the capacity demands of delayed intention performance.

Abstract

Prospective memory tasks are often accomplished during the performance of other activities. Despite the dual-task nature of prospective memory, little attention has been paid to how successful prospective memory performance affects ongoing activities. In the first 2 experiments, participants performing an embedded prospective memory task had longer response times on nonprospective memory target trials of a lexical decision task than participants performing the lexical decision task alone. In the prospective memory groups, longer lexical decision response times were associated with better prospective memory performance (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), a pattern not demonstrated with an embedded retrospective memory task (Experiment 2). The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the retrieval of a delayed intention, or the prospective component, can require capacity.

Multiple Processes in Prospective Memory Retrieval: Factors Determining Monitoring Versus Spontaneous Retrieval.

“…An important new result was that monitoring declined over trials in the nonfocal target condition. This result is consistent with Smith's (2003) view that monitoring is a controlled process and with Bargh and Chartrand's (1999) view that capacity for maintaining controlled processing is limited. Critically, and as predicted by the multiprocess theory, decreased monitoring in the nonfocal condition was associated with declines in PM performance, whereas no such relation was observed in the focal condition.…”

“…Consistent with previous research (Marsh, Hicks, Cook, Hansen, & Pallos, 2003;Smith, 2003), there was no effect of performing a PM task on the accuracy of performing the ongoing task (Msϭ 0.97, SDs ϭ 0.02 in both the no PM and PM conditions), F(1, 92) ϭ 1.48, p ϭ .29. Also, there were no significant effects involving this variable (all ps Ͼ .16).…”

“…According to Smith's (2003) monitoring theory (we consider other views of monitoring in the General Discussion), there should be no prospective responding in the absence of a capacity consuming process that initiates a recognition check for each item. This pattern suggests that PM retrieval can occur spontaneously under certain conditions.…”

“…One interpretation of these results is that dividing attention interferes with an executive monitoring process that is necessary for identifying events in the environment as PM targets. Smith (2003) presented evidence that performing an eventbased PM task concurrently with an ongoing task slows processing on an ongoing task. The PM task in her research was to press a key whenever any one of six target items occurred, and the ongoing task was to make lexical decisions as quickly as possible.…”

“…An important assumption of the monitoring view is that retrieval of an intention cannot occur without monitoring of the environment for the target event (Smith, 2003). In Experiment 5, we discouraged monitoring by telling participants to ignore the PM task during an intervening lexical decision task.…”