The demands of an ongoing activity influence the success of event-based prospective memory

Marsh, Richard L.; Hancock, Thomas; Hicks, Jason L. · 2002 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03196319

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Summary

This study investigates how the cognitive demands of an ongoing activity affect the success of event-based prospective memory (PM), which involves remembering to perform an action when a specific environmental cue appears. While previous research established that divided attention reduces PM performance, this research specifically examines whether manipulating the characteristics of the ongoing task itself—without adding a separate concurrent task—impacts PM success. The authors hypothesize that event-based PM requires executive resources and that higher demands on the ongoing task will inversely covary with PM performance, consistent with a production rule account of cognitive processing. Four experiments were conducted using university undergraduates. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed an ongoing task involving word judgments (e.g., detecting long-E sounds or animateness). One group made a single judgment throughout, while another randomly switched between two different judgments on each trial. Experiment 3 compared participants making two binary judgments sequentially against those making a single four-alternative judgment that combined the same criteria, testing whether compiling judgments into one production rule frees up resources. Experiment 4 examined whether two related judgments (counting letters and judging odd/even) compiled into a single rule more effectively than two unrelated judgments (counting letters and syllables). In all experiments, participants were instructed to press a specific key whenever an animal word appeared as the prospective cue. The results consistently demonstrated that increased cognitive demands on the ongoing task reduced prospective memory success. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants who randomly switched between two judgments showed significantly worse PM performance than those making a single judgment, despite having more time to process cues due to slower reaction times. Experiment 3 found that participants making a combined four-alternative judgment performed better on PM than those making two discrete binary judgments, supporting the idea that compiling tasks into a single production rule conserves resources. Experiment 4 showed that making two related judgments resulted in better PM performance than making two unrelated judgments, suggesting that related tasks spontaneously compile into a single production rule, freeing resources for the prospective task. The study concludes that event-based prospective memory is sensitive to the quantitative processing demands of the ongoing activity. When an ongoing task requires more executive resources, fewer are available to notice and respond to intention-related cues. This finding extends previous divided-attention research by showing that the internal structure of the ongoing task, rather than just the presence of a second task, influences PM success. The implications suggest that in everyday life, being deeply engrossed in a cognitively demanding activity reduces the likelihood of noticing environmental cues for intended actions, highlighting a tradeoff between ongoing task demands and prospective memory performance.

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• prospective memory interruptions