Abstract
Prospective memory (PM) refers to our ability to realize delayed intentions. In event-based PM paradigms, participants must act on an intention when they detect the occurrence of a pre-established cue. Some theorists propose that in such paradigms PM responding can only occur when participants deliberately initiate processes for monitoring their environment for appropriate cues. Others propose that perceptual processing of PM cues can directly trigger PM responding in the absence of strategic monitoring, at least under some circumstances. In order to address this debate, we present a computational model implementing the latter account, using a parallel distributed processing (interactive activation) framework. In this model PM responses can be triggered directly as a result of spreading activation from units representing perceptual inputs. PM responding can also be promoted by top-down monitoring for PM targets. The model fits a wide variety of empirical findings from PM paradigms, including the effect of maintaining PM intentions on ongoing response time and the intention superiority effect. The model also makes novel predictions concerning the effect of stimulus degradation on PM performance, the shape of response time distributions on ongoing and prospective memory trials, and the effects of instructing participants to make PM responses instead of ongoing responses or alongside them. These predictions were confirmed in two empirical experiments. We therefore suggest that PM should be considered to result from the interplay between bottom-up triggering of PM responses by perceptual input, and top-down monitoring for appropriate cues. We also show how the model can be extended to simulate encoding new intentions and subsequently deactivating them, and consider links between the model’s performance and results from neuroimaging.
Highlights
In standard laboratory paradigms for assessing prospective memory (PM), participants are engaged in an ongoing task requiring classification of a series of stimuli
Analysis of individual differences in PM hit rates showed that participants with higher hit rates tended to have a larger intention superiority effect (r = .62, p = .002)
After [29] we refer to these as the ‘‘task switching’’ condition and the ‘‘dual task’’ condition. We investigated whether these experimental paradigms would modulate the following three effects that, in the model, are dependent on competitive interactions between ongoing and PM pathways: 1) intention superiority effect; 2) greater coefficient of variation (CV) of ongoing than PM miss response times (RTs) distribution; 3) greater CV of ongoing than PM hit RT distribution
Summary
In standard laboratory paradigms for assessing prospective memory (PM), participants are engaged in an ongoing task requiring classification of a series of stimuli. In this way PM targets are embedded within an ongoing task. These stimuli do not compel a PM response; participants could make a standard ongoing response (in this case, right key) if they did not classify the stimulus as a target. In some respects this is similar to real-world situations in which people hold a delayed intention (e.g. to post a letter), while performing an ongoing task (e.g. walking down the street, engaged in conversation). On encountering a target (i.e. mailbox), one might make an appropriate PM response (post the letter), or miss the target and continue the ongoing task (walk past the mailbox)
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