The role of enactment in prospective remembering

This study investigated, in a laboratory setting, whether prospective memory (remembering to perform intended actions in the future) would be improved by self-enactment of the to-be-remembered tasks. The subjects, 45 university students, were asked to remember later to perform five tasks that they initially enacted themselves, watched the experimenter perform, or had described to them. These tasks were to be performed, ostensibly in preparation for the next subject, at the end of 30 min of filler activity, which was presented as the experimental task. Surprisingly, self-enactment produced the poorest prospective remembering. Speculative explanations are offered in terms of both metacognitive expectations about memory and output-monitoring deficiencies.