Event-Based Prospective Remembering in a Virtual World

Trawley, Steven L.; Law, Anna S.; Logie, Robert H. · 2011 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2011.584976

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Summary

This study investigates event-based prospective memory (PM) in a controlled laboratory setting that mimics real-world conditions by allowing participant-driven actions to determine cue availability. Traditional PM paradigms often fail to capture the complexity of naturalistic scenarios, where the timing and perspective of a cue depend on the individual’s movements and choices. The authors aimed to examine how participant-driven navigation affects PM performance, specifically exploring the roles of planning, working memory, and the discrepancy between encoding and retrieval contexts. The researchers utilized the Edinburgh Virtual Errands Task (EVET), a virtual reality environment featuring a four-story building with thirty-eight rooms. Participants were tasked with completing eight errands within eight minutes. Crucially, participants first created a plan for the order of errands, then executed the task while their movements were tracked. PM failures were defined as instances where participants passed a cue location without performing the required action, despite successfully recalling the intention post-test. To assess cognitive predictors, participants also completed independent measures of retrospective memory (word recall), verbal working memory span, visuo-spatial working memory span, planning ability (Travelling Salesperson Task), and a separate PM measure (Breakfast Task). The results indicated that sticking to an original plan, regardless of its efficiency, was significantly associated with better PM performance. Participants who adhered to their pre-test plans committed fewer PM errors than those who altered their plans during the task, even if the changes improved efficiency. Multiple regression analysis revealed that verbal working memory span, planning ability, and independent PM performance were significant predictors of PM failures in the EVET. In contrast, visuo-spatial working memory and retrospective memory did not uniquely predict PM errors, although spatial working memory correlated with navigation efficiency (travel time). These findings suggest that verbal working memory resources and the stability of a pre-formed plan are critical for successful prospective remembering in dynamic environments. The study highlights the importance of planning stability in prospective memory, suggesting that maintaining a consistent contextual framework aids retrieval more than spontaneous adjustments. It also supports the domain-specific nature of working memory contributions to PM, emphasizing verbal over spatial resources in this context. By validating a novel virtual reality methodology, the paper provides a bridge between controlled laboratory experiments and complex naturalistic settings, offering a more ecologically valid approach to studying how individuals manage intentions in everyday life.

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• prospective memory interruptions