Transcript Upstate Community Survey

Caroline E. Balling, Carson E. Hall, and Gilles O. Einstein
Department of Psychology, Furman University
Prospective Memory (PM) is memory for actions to be
completed in the future.
•
PROCEDURE
1a. Living/Non-Living Task
Press “YES” if the word describes a living thing (e.g.
arm), and “NO” if the word describes a non-living thing
(e.g. table)
The majority of PM research has focused on how people
retrieve intentions. Researchers have recently turned their
attention to what happens to PM intentions after they have
been completed and have formed two views:
• Persisting activation view (Scullin et al. 2011; Walser et
al. 2012)
• Deactivation view (Forster et al. 2005)
1b. Prospective Memory (PM) Task
Press the “Q” key when you see the target words
either “bracelet” and “insect”
Context Shift
Phase two was the same as
experiment one
1c. Completion instructions
Either control or context shift
Five minute break
PHASE TWO
RESULTS
2a. Speed Task: Lexical Decision Task (LDT)
Press “YES” for a word (e.g. table) and “NO” for a
nonword (e.g. shilaw). Both of the target words are
presented, and I am measuring if participants slow to
them
There was no significant slowing to target
words compared to control words
2b. Thought Probes
Report what you are thinking about and why when
periodically prompted
RESULTS
Control Condition: significant slowing
to target words compared to control
words
700
Response Times to Target and Control
Items (ms)
• Within subjects variable: word type (target vs. control)
• Between subjects variable-condition (control, extreme context change):
1b. Prospective Memory (PM) Task
Circle the target words “daily” or “worker”
when you see them in the passage
Testing location (classroom to lab) and
media (paper to computer)
To test if extreme context shifts facilitate the deactivation of
intentions.
2x2 Mixed Factorial Design
1a. Reading Comprehension Task
Participants read a passage and
answered questions for six passages
PHASE ONE
For example: remembering to pick up milk on the way home, take your
medication, or call a friend
Previous research consistently finds
evidence for persisting activation,
even when using very strong and
clear completion instructions
(Anderson & Einstein,
2016).
PROCEDURE
600
500
400
Control
Target
300
200
Relative to the control condition in
Experiment 1, participants were much less
likely to report PM thoughts after seeing a
target word
Context Shift Condition: no significant
slowing to target words compared to
control words in the context shift
100
0
Control
Context Shift
Anderson, F. and Einstein, G. O. (2016). The fate of completed intentions. Submitted for publication.
Scullin, M. K., Bugg, J. M., McDaniel, M. A., & Einstein, G. O. (2011). Prospective memory and aging:
Preserved spontaneous retrieval, but impaired deactivation, in older adults. Memory & Cognition, 39,
1232-1240.
Förster, J., Liberman, N., & Higgins, E. T. (2005). Accessibility from active and fulfilled goals. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 220-239.
Walser, M., Fischer, R., & Goschke, T. (2012). The failure of deactivating intentions: Aftereffects of
completed intentions in the repeated prospective memory cue paradigm. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Percentage of Thoughts that Participants
Mentioned the PM Task
35
In both conditions, participants were
much more likely to report PM
thoughts after target words
30
25
20
Control
Target
15
10
5
0
Control
Context Shift
They were less likely to have PM
thoughts, however, in the context shift
condition
• Consistent with the encoding specificity principle, a new
context seems to disrupt spontaneous retrieval.
• Our results suggest that intentions are likely to continue to
be spontaneously retrieved after the intention is
completed unless the target word appears in a new
context. This could create problems such as commission
errors in many everyday tasks, like medication adherence.