The role of offloading intentions on future-oriented thinking.

Offloading (e.g., using Google calendar reminders) has been shown to improve prospective memory (PM). One unstudied aspect of PM offloading is whether having reminders reduces our future-oriented thinking about PM intentions in contexts in which the intention cannot be fulfilled. In the current study, participants were given two blocks of an ongoing lexical decision task. Prior to beginning the task, participants formed an intention to make a special response to PM targets only in block 2. Participants in the reminder condition had the PM intention displayed at the top of the screen in block 2, whereas those in the no-reminder condition did not. To assess activation of the intention out of context, PM lures (Experiment 1) or thought probes (Experiments 2 and 3) were presented in block 1. Results showed that reminders improved PM performance in block 2 but did not reduce lure interference or PM-related thoughts in block 1. These findings suggest that offloaded memory representations remain as activated and accessible as non-offloaded representations outside the context in which intentions can be fulfilled.

Strategic monitoring improves prospective memory: A meta-analysis.

Monitoring the environment for target events that trigger prospective memory (PM) retrieval requires cognitive resources, reflected by costs to ongoing task performance (i.e., worse accuracy and/or slower response times). Strategic monitoring refers to the use of context to engage or disengage monitoring when a PM target is anticipated or unanticipated. Laboratory strategic monitoring studies have found mixed results as to whether context specification improves PM performance. This study employed a meta-analytic technique to assess the overall effect of context specification on PM performance and ongoing task metrics of strategic monitoring. Overall, context specification improved PM performance when the target was anticipated and improved ongoing task performance (speed and accuracy) when the target was not anticipated. Moderator analyses revealed the degree of slowing in anticipated contexts predicted how much context specification improved PM performance. However, the benefits to PM performance from context specification differed by the type of procedure used. PM performance was improved when context changes could be predicted during blocked or proximity procedures, but not when context varied randomly in trial-level procedures. These results provide insights into the mechanisms underlying strategic monitoring and guidance for researchers on which procedures to be use depending on the theory-driven questions.

Dissociating proactive and reactive control in older adults.

The Dual Mechanisms of Control framework predicts that age-related declines should be most prominent for tasks that require proactive control, while tasks requiring reactive control should show minimal age differences in performance. However, results from traditional paradigms are inconclusive as to whether these two processes are independent, making it difficult to understand how these processes change with age. The present study manipulated the proportion congruency in a list-wide (Experiments 1 and 2) or item-specific (Experiment 1) fashion to independently assess proactive and reactive control, respectively. In the list-wide task, older adults were unable to proactively bias attention away from word processing based on list-level expectancies. Proactive control deficits replicated across multiple task paradigms, with different Stroop stimuli (picture-word, integrated color-word, separated color-word), and different behavioral indices (Stroop interference, secondary prospective memory). In contrast, older adults were successfully able to reactively filter the word dimension based on item-specific expectancies. These findings provide unambiguous support that aging is associated with declines in proactive, but not reactive, control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Benefits from prospective memory offloading depend on memory load and reminder type.

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to complete a task at the appropriate moment in the future. Past research has found reminders can improve PM performance in both laboratory and naturalistic settings, but few projects have examined the circumstances when and what types of reminders are most beneficial. Three experiments in the present study tested the influence of reminders in an event-based PM task under different cognitive loads. An additional study examined how effective reminders of different types were. In Experiments 1 (specific targets) and 2 (nonspecific targets), load was manipulated by having participants respond to a single (low load) or multiple (high load) targets. In Experiment 3, the association between target-action word pairs was manipulated by presenting strongly associated pairs (low load) or weakly associated pairs (high load). Experiment 4 used target-action word pairs and varied the type of reminder. Participants in the reminder conditions had target (Experiments 1 and 2), target and action (Experiment 3) or target and/or action (Experiment 4) reminders listed at the top of the screen throughout the PM task. Across the first 3 experiments, it was found that the benefit of reminders was greater under high load than low load conditions. Experiment 4 found that target-action reminders improved PM, while target-only or action-only reminders did not. Importantly, the improvements in PM from reminders occurred without cost to ongoing task performance. Together these results suggest that reminders can be beneficial for reducing PM failures, particularly under high load, without the potential downside of increased effort expenditure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Individual differences in working memory capacity predict benefits to memory from intention offloading.

Research suggests that individuals with lower working memory have difficulty remembering to fulfil delayed intentions. The current study examined whether the ability to offload intentions onto the environment mitigated these deficits. Participants (N = 268) completed three versions of a delayed intention task with and without the use of reminders, along with three measures of working memory capacity. Results showed that individuals with higher working memory fulfilled more intentions when having to rely on their own memory, but this difference was eliminated when offloading was permitted. Individuals with lower working memory chose to offload more often, suggesting that they were less willing to engage in effortful maintenance of internal representations when given the option. Working memory was not associated with metacognitive confidence or optimal offloading choices based on point value. These findings suggest offloading may help circumvent capacity limitations associated with maintaining and remembering delayed intentions.