engleski

Verbalization and goal neglect in prospective memory tasks

Prospective memory (PM) refers to memory for an intended action to be performed in the future. Studies have focused on distinguishing between prospective and retrospective memory errors in PM tasks overlooking other possible causes of errors, such as goal neglect. Neglect is most often observed in people with brain damage, but it can also be found in healthy adults under conditions of multiple task requirements. A way to measure neglect is via verbalization, yet verbalization could interfere with PM performance. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether goal neglect might cause errors in PM tasks and whether verbalization can serve as its proxy. Participants in both studies (N1=83, N2=71) were randomly assigned to either experimental (instructed to verbalize the task while performing it) or control group, and completed a 3-day (Study 1) or a 5-day version (Study 2) of the Virtual week (VW) task (Rendell & Craik, 2000), respectively. The results of both studies showed that verbalization does not affect PM. Errors in PM tasks can primarily be attributed to PM errors, and to a smaller extent to recall failure and goal neglect. Results indicate that goal neglect can cause PM failures, especially in more demanding PM tasks.

prospective memory ; goal neglect ; verbalization

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