Cue Competition in Prospective Memory

Abstract

Prospective memory refers to remembering to perform a previously planned activity. Two experiments were conducted to see if effects of cue competition similar to blocking and overshadowing occur in prospective memory. Participants were led to believe that the experiments were about the relationship between memory and creativity. To test prospective memory, participants were instructed to mark cue words that would appear later in a task requiring the generation of sentences. In Exp. 1 (N = 119) one group was told to place an “x” over the cue word “rake”; a second was told to mark two words of equal salience (“method” and “rake”); and a third group was told to mark two cue words of unequal salience (the highly salient word “monad” and “rake”). “Rake” was the only cue word that actually appeared in the task involving generation of sentences. Participants instructed to place an “x” over one cue marked the target cue “rake” more frequently than if told to mark two cues (an overshadowing-like effect). The frequency of marking “rake” was lowest on the first test trial if participants had been instructed to mark both “rake” and “monad.” In Exp. 2 (N = 43) a blocking group was trained to mark one cue word (“rake”) and a control group received no training. Two days later, all participants were instructed to mark two cues (“rake” and “method”) during a task involving the generation of sentences. Prior training interfered with performance to a new cue (“method”) given in combination with the pretrained cue (“rake,” a blocking-like effect). These experiments demonstrate the existence of cue competition in prospective memory and suggest the possibility of applying theories of elementary associative learning to the study of prospective memory.