When is context used to guide prospective memory monitoring?

Ball, B. Hunter; Peper, Phil; Bugg, Julie M. · 2024 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13423-024-02568-3

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Summary

This study investigates the conditions under which individuals utilize contextual cues to guide prospective memory (PM) monitoring, specifically addressing when strategic monitoring occurs. PM involves remembering to perform an action in the future, which requires attentional resources to monitor the environment for targets. To conserve resources, individuals may engage in "strategic monitoring," increasing vigilance in contexts where targets are likely and relaxing it where they are not. However, identifying the context itself can be effortful. The authors hypothesize that the decision to use context is driven by a cost–benefit analysis weighing the effort of context identification against the benefit of reducing target-checking demands. The research employed two experiments using a lexical decision ongoing task combined with a PM task where participants pressed a key upon seeing a triangle shape. In Experiment 1, the context cue was "focal," meaning the ongoing task (judging font case) automatically oriented attention to the contextual feature (matching vs. mismatching font). The difficulty of checking for the PM target was manipulated by presenting shapes either near the center (easy) or in the corners (hard). Results showed that participants engaged in strategic monitoring—reducing response time costs on trials where targets were not expected—regardless of whether target checking was easy or difficult. This indicates that when context identification is automatic, strategic monitoring occurs irrespective of target-checking demands. Experiment 2 manipulated the context cue to be "nonfocal," requiring participants to judge word length, which does not automatically orient attention to the font case context. Here, the authors predicted that strategic monitoring would only occur if target checking was difficult. The results supported this hypothesis: participants only reduced monitoring costs on non-target trials when the PM targets were presented in the corners (hard condition). When targets were presented near the center (easy condition), participants did not engage in strategic monitoring, likely because the effort required to identify the nonfocal context outweighed the minimal benefit of avoiding easy target checks. These findings refine the understanding of prospective memory control by demonstrating that strategic monitoring is not automatic but is contingent on a dynamic cost–benefit analysis. Individuals utilize contextual cues to guide monitoring only when the perceived effort of identifying the context is justified by the reduction in attentional demands required for target checking. This suggests that cognitive control in PM is flexible and resource-efficient, adapting to the specific demands of both context identification and target detection.

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• prospective memory interruptions