The fate of completed intentions

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Memory Research

Background:

• Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to perform an intended action in the future.
• A key question is whether completed PM intentions are deactivated or persist in activation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the deactivation of prospective memory intentions after completion.
• To determine if completed PM intentions interfere with ongoing tasks due to persistent activation.

Main Methods:

• Participants completed a PM task embedded within an ongoing task.
• Following completion, participants performed only the ongoing task, with PM targets reappearing later.
• Experiments varied conditions to promote deactivation of completed PM intentions.

Main Results:

• Measures in Experiment 1 supported the existence of persisting activation of completed PM intentions.
• Experiment 2 found evidence for spontaneous retrieval persistence across all groups, despite efforts to promote deactivation.

Conclusions:

• Completed prospective memory intentions exhibit persisting activation and spontaneous retrieval.
• This persistence can interfere with current cognitive tasks, highlighting a potential downside of spontaneous retrieval.