The role of intentionality in memory and learning: Comments on Popov and Dames (2022)

This commentary is a reply to the article "Intent matters: Resolving the intentional versus incidental learning paradox in episodic long-term memory" by Popov and Dames (2022). In their article, the authors question the view that once adequate deep, elaborate, and organizational processes have been induced incidentally, the intention to learn adds nothing further to the level of subsequent retention. Opposing this view, Popov and Dames conclude that intention to learn is always necessary for good memory performance and support this claim with the results of 11 experiments in which they find strong effects of intentionality using mixed-list designs in which all items are processed semantically but only half need be remembered later. The present commentary suggests that intentionality leads to selectively greater amounts of item processing and organizational processing of the to-be-remembered items in mixed lists, and that these further operations result in higher levels of recall. In light of this interpretation, the commentary argues for the validity of the original conclusion that retention is determined by the qualitative type of processing carried out on the items to be remembered, however that processing is induced. The commentary concludes by discussing various factors that modulate the effect of intentionality on memory and learning, and by suggesting a scheme that may aid the understanding of these effects, and serve as a framework for future studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).