Self-reported strategy use and prospective memory: The roles of cue focality and task importance

Harrington, Erin E.; Reese-Melancon, Celinda; Turner, Rachael L. · 2025 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3758/s13421-024-01600-0

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates the metacognitive aspects of prospective memory (PM), specifically examining how self-reported strategy use, cue focality, and perceived task importance interact to influence PM performance. While previous research has established that focal PM tasks (where the cue is processed similarly to the ongoing task) are easier than nonfocal tasks, less is known about whether individuals naturally recognize these demands and adjust their strategies accordingly. The authors aimed to determine if participants report using strategies more frequently in difficult conditions, how strategy use affects both PM success and ongoing task costs, and whether perceived task importance moderates these relationships. The researchers conducted a laboratory experiment with 167 undergraduate participants who completed a lexical decision task (LDT) embedded with PM cues of varying difficulty: focal (specific word), nonfocal-category (semantic category), or nonfocal-syllable (specific syllable). After the task, participants reported whether they used a strategy to remember the PM intention and rated the perceived importance of the PM task. Strategy reports were coded into categories such as monitoring, timing, or attention. Statistical analyses included mixed factorial ANOVAs and moderation analyses to assess the effects of focality and strategy use on PM accuracy and ongoing task response times, with and without controlling for perceived importance. Results indicated that while most participants reported using a strategy regardless of condition, strategy use was significantly less frequent in the nonfocal-category condition compared to focal and nonfocal-syllable conditions. Crucially, strategy use improved PM performance only in the most challenging nonfocal-syllable condition; in focal and nonfocal-category conditions, strategy users did not perform better than non-users. Strategy use was associated with significant costs to the ongoing task, manifested as slower response times, with slowing increasing as task difficulty increased. Moderation analyses revealed that perceived task importance played a distinct role: for moderately difficult nonfocal-category tasks, higher perceived importance alone predicted better PM success. However, for the most difficult nonfocal-syllable tasks, strategy use remained the primary driver of performance success, independent of importance ratings. The findings suggest that individuals do not always align their strategic efforts with task demands, as evidenced by lower strategy use in the nonfocal-category condition despite its difficulty. The study highlights a trade-off where strategic monitoring improves PM accuracy in high-demand contexts but incurs cognitive costs to ongoing performance. Furthermore, the results distinguish the roles of motivation and strategy: perceived importance may suffice for moderately difficult tasks, but explicit strategy implementation is necessary for the most challenging PM intentions. This work advances PM theory by clarifying the specific conditions under which metacognitive awareness and strategic control are essential for successful intention execution.

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-25; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• prospective memory interruptions