After-effects of responding to activated and deactivated prospective memory target events differ depending on processing overlaps
Abstract
Responding to a prospective memory task requires switching tasks, which typically comes at a performance cost. Similarly, when the prospective memory task is deactivated, a cost can occur when previously relevant prospective memory targets appear unexpectedly. In three experiments, we investigated whether the after-effects of activated and deactivated prospective memory target events varied with different degrees of cue focality. The results showed that lower focality resulted in stronger after-effects when the prospective memory task was activated but to weaker after-effects when the prospective memory task was deactivated. For deactivated prospective memory, after-effects occurred only under high process overlap situations in a zero-target condition, in which participants were instructed for the prospective memory task, but never had the opportunity to perform it. We discuss these findings within the process overlap framework, which allows more fine-grained distinctions than the focal versus non-focal dichotomy.
Date Issued
2022-09-01
Publication Type
Conference Item
Subject(s)
Language(s)
en
Author(s)
Access(Rights)
metadata.only