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A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions
Published on: July 16, 2015
Target preexposure eliminates the effect of distraction on event-based prospective memory
Melissa J Guynn1, Mark A McDaniel
1Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003-8001, USA. mguynn@nmsu.edu
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|September 19, 2007
Summary
Target preexposure significantly improved prospective memory performance, even under divided attention. This method buffers prospective memory against distraction by facilitating action association.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Prospective memory (PM) is essential for daily tasks.
- PM is susceptible to attentional demands and distractions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if pre-exposing participants to prospective memory targets can buffer PM against distraction.
- To examine the effect of pre-exposure on PM performance under varying attentional loads.
Main Methods:
- Participants performed an ongoing task with an embedded PM task.
- Half the participants received pre-exposure to PM target stimuli.
- Attentional demand was manipulated (full vs. divided attention).
Main Results:
- Target pre-exposure enhanced overall PM performance.
- Pre-exposure eliminated the negative impact of divided attention on PM.
- Pre-exposure improved the accuracy of the intended action.
Conclusions:
- Pre-exposing stimuli buffers prospective memory against distraction.
- This buffering effect may stem from enhanced stimulus-action association encoding.
- Facilitated retrieval processes likely contribute to distraction resilience.
