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.
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.
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.
Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost (e.g., slower responding) to ongoing activities. However, research ...suggests that individuals are able to monitor strategically by using contextual cues to reduce monitoring in contexts in which PM targets are not expected to occur. In the current study, we investigated the processes supporting context identification (i.e., determining whether or not the context is appropriate for monitoring) by testing the
context cue focality hypothesis
. This hypothesis predicts that the ability to monitor strategically depends on whether the ongoing task orients attention to the contextual cues that are available to guide monitoring. In Experiment 1, participants performed an ongoing lexical decision task and were told that PM targets (TOR syllable) would only occur in word trials (focal context cue condition) or in items starting with consonants (nonfocal context cue condition). In Experiment 2, participants performed an ongoing first letter judgment (consonant/vowel) task and were told that PM targets would only occur in items starting with consonants (focal context cue condition) or in word trials (nonfocal context cue condition). Consistent with the context cue focality hypothesis, strategic monitoring was only observed during focal context cue conditions in which the type of ongoing task processing automatically oriented attention to the relevant features of the contextual cue. These findings suggest that strategic monitoring is dependent on limited-capacity processing resources and may be relatively limited when the attentional demands of context identification are sufficiently high.
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.
Public Significance Statement
Completion of task goals (e.g., going to grocery store) often requires overcoming automatic tendencies (e.g., taking normal route home). Goal completion can be improved by activating the goal and preparing attention before anticipated distraction occurs (proactive control) or by quickly retrieving the task goal and focusing attention after distraction occurs (reactive control). The present study demonstrates that although aging is associated with declines in proactive control, successful goal completion by use of reactive control remains intact with advanced age. These findings are important for theories of cognitive aging, as they indicate that not all control processes decline with age.
The present study implemented an individual differences approach in conjunction with response time (RT) variability and distribution modeling techniques to better characterize the cognitive control ...dynamics underlying ongoing task cost (i.e., slowing) and cue detection in event-based prospective memory (PM). Three experiments assessed the relation between proactive control ability, ex-Gaussian parameter estimates (μ and τ), intraindividual variability in responding (coefficient of variation, CoV), and PM cue detection. Experiment 1 examined these relations using a standard nonfocal PM paradigm. Experiments 2 and 3 further assessed how PM importance and PM cue focality, respectively, influenced performance. Across all experiments, nonfocal PM was associated with increases in all cost measures, but only μ reliably predicted cue detection. Importance instructions and focal PM cues selectively increased and decreased μ cost, respectively, relative to the standard nonfocal condition. These findings suggest that μ cost may reflect a target-checking process that benefits cue detection and produces slowing throughout the entire ongoing task. Additionally, across all experiments proactive control was positively associated with μ cost and cue detection, and generally negatively associated with variability cost (τ and CoV). These findings suggest that natural variation in proactive control ability may affect reliance on more efficacious monitoring processes that facilitates cue detection. Furthermore, variability in responding may have little influence on successful PM. The results from the current study highlight the utility of RT variability and distribution analyses in understanding PM costs and have important implications for extant theories of PM concerning the cognitive control processes underlying cue detection.
Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) have long been known to relate to performance in domains outside of WM, including attentional control, long-term memory, problem-solving, and ...fluid intelligence to name a few. Complex span WM tasks, composed of a processing component and a storage component, are often used to index WMC in these types of investigations. Capacity estimates are derived from performance on the storage component only, while processing performance is often largely ignored. Here, we explore the relationship between processing performance and WMC in a large dataset for each of three complex span tasks to better characterize how the components of these tasks might be related. We provide evidence that enforcing an 85% or better accuracy criterion for the processing portion of the task results in the removal of a disproportionate number of individuals exhibiting lower WMC estimates. We also find broad support for differences in processing task performance, characterized according to both accuracy and reaction time metrics, as a function of WMC. We suggest that researchers may want to include processing task performance measures, in addition to capacity estimates, in studies using complex span tasks to index WMC. This approach may better characterize the relationships between complex span task performance and performance in disparate domains of cognition.
Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost to ongoing activities. The current study investigated younger and ...older adults' ability to monitor strategically, which involves the heightening and relaxation of monitoring when it is contextually appropriate thereby affording conservation of limited-capacity attentional resources. Participants performed a lexical-decision task in which words or nonwords were presented in upper or lower locations of the screen. The specific condition was correctly informed that PM targets ("tor" syllable) would occur only in word trials (simple cue; Experiment 1), in word trials in the upper location (complex cue; Experiments 2 and 3A), or in red trials in the upper location (complex cue; Experiment 3B), whereas the nonspecific condition was told that targets could appear in any context. The results showed that older adults generally exhibited similar monitoring patterns as younger adults. When context varied randomly on each trial, younger and older adults in the specific condition utilized simple (Experiment 1) but not complex (Experiment 2) contextual cues to reduce monitoring in unexpected contexts relative to the nonspecific condition. Notably, younger but not older adults were able to use the location dimension of the complex cue to reduce monitoring in unexpected (lower) contexts. When context varied more predictably (i.e., changed every eight trials), both younger and older adults were able to monitor strategically in response to the complex contextual cue (Experiments 3A and 3B). Together these findings suggest that context-sensitive PM monitoring processes generally remain intact with increased age.
Age-related episodic memory deficits imply that older and younger adults differentially retrieve and monitor contextual features that indicate the source of studied information. Such differences have ...been shown in subjective reports during recognition and cued recall as well as process estimates derived from computational models of free recall organisation. The present study extends the subject report method to free recall to characterise age differences in context retrieval and monitoring, and to test assumptions from a context-based computational model. Older and younger adults studied two lists of semantically related words and then recalled from only the first or second list. After each recall, participants indicated their subjective context retrieval using remember/know judgments. Compared to younger adults, older adults showed lower recall accuracy and subjective reports of context retrieval (i.e., remember judgments) that were less specific to correct recalls. These differences appeared after first-recall attempts. Recall functions conditioned on serial positions were more continual across correct recalls from target lists and intrusions from non-target lists for older than younger adults. Together with other analyses of context retrieval and monitoring reported here, these findings suggest that older adults retrieved context less distinctively across the recall period, leading to greater perceived similarity for temporally contiguous lists.
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