Improving prospective memory with contextual cueing

Bowden, Vanessa K.; Smith, Rebekah E.; Loft, Shayne · 2021 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/s13421-020-01122-5

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Summary

This study investigates how contextual cues and warnings influence prospective memory (PM) performance, specifically aiming to determine if warning participants that a PM-relevant context is approaching improves the efficiency of PM control processes and accuracy. Prospective memory involves remembering to perform a deferred action in the future, often while engaged in an ongoing task. Previous research suggests that contextual information can reduce the cognitive "costs" associated with PM monitoring, but findings on whether context improves PM accuracy have been inconsistent. The authors hypothesized that explicit warnings about the approach of PM-relevant contexts would facilitate the timely initiation of control processes, thereby enhancing PM accuracy, particularly for targets appearing later in a context sequence. The researchers conducted three experiments using undergraduate participants who performed an ongoing lexical decision task embedded with a PM task requiring a response to the target syllable "tor." In Experiment 1, participants were assigned to standard (no context), context (targets only on red trials), or warned + context (yellow trials preceded red trials) conditions. Experiment 2 utilized a separate warning mechanism, where a 1-second pre-trial red fixation preceded PM-relevant contexts. Experiment 3 replicated these findings and included a control condition to ensure that color changes alone, without associated context, did not drive the results. PM targets were presented in the first, second, or third trial positions within sets of four PM-relevant trials. The results demonstrated that contextual cues improved both PM control efficiency and accuracy across all experiments. Specifically, context consistently improved PM accuracy for targets appearing in the second and third trial positions of PM-relevant contexts. However, an accuracy benefit for targets in the first trial position was observed only in Experiment 2, where the warning was a separate pre-trial fixation, rather than in Experiment 1 where the warning was embedded within the ongoing task. Experiment 3 confirmed that these effects were due to contextual information rather than simple color changes. The findings indicate that warnings allow participants to engage PM control processes prior to target presentation, reducing costs on irrelevant trials and increasing them on relevant trials as appropriate. These findings are significant for understanding the mechanisms of prospective memory, particularly how individuals allocate cognitive resources in response to environmental cues. The study clarifies that while context generally aids PM performance, the immediacy of the benefit depends on the nature of the warning. Separate warnings (Experiment 2) facilitated immediate engagement of control processes, benefiting even the first target in a sequence, whereas embedded warnings (Experiment 1) required participants to process the warning within the ongoing task, delaying the benefit until subsequent trials. This suggests that the structure of contextual cues critically influences the efficiency of PM control processes, with implications for designing systems that support memory in real-world environments where predictable contexts exist.

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• prospective memory interruptions