Great expectations: Anticipating a reminder influences prospective memory encoding and unaided retrieval

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Retrospective memory research shows reduced encoding effort when reminders are expected, leading to poorer performance if reminders are removed.
• Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to perform an intended action in the future, and may be less sensitive to expectancy effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if expectancy effects on encoding effort and retrieval performance extend to prospective memory (PM) intentions.
• To determine if PM intentions are less sensitive to the removal of expected reminder systems.

Main Methods:

• Participants encoded PM targets across four blocks, with reminders available for the first three.
• Encoding effort was measured using study duration, pupil size, and self-report.
• One group was informed about the reminder's removal in the fourth block, while others were not.

Main Results:

• Expecting a reminder significantly lowered both objective and subjective encoding effort for PM targets.
• Unaided PM retrieval performance was reduced when reminders were expected but removed.
• Encoding effort partially mediated the impact of expectations on PM retrieval.

Conclusions:

• Prospective memory and retrospective memory encoding processes are similar regarding expectancy effects.
• Individuals adjust their learning strategies to optimize memory encoding when reminders are anticipated or absent.
• Findings highlight the influence of external memory aids on cognitive effort and performance in PM tasks.