Research On Features Of Prospective Memory

Prospective Memory is memory for activities to be performed in the future, i.e. memory for intentions and plans of the future, which makes people remember to do something in the future. This article summarized researches on prospective memory that had been done, and carried out researches on the characteristics of different kind of prospective memory.In the first part, This article summarized prospective memory from 7 aspects: the definition and characteristics, history, classification, research methods, affecting factor, mechanisms and theoretical models, theoretic and real value of prospective memory.In the experimental part, the article, taking undergraduates as testees, respectively researched event-based, activity-based and time-based prospective memory and compared the three kinds of prospective memory in an experiment. The interferential task of the four experiments is Carttel's 16 Personality Factors Questionnaire (16PF) and the on-going task of the three preceding experiments is Raven's Progressive Matrices (or Temperament Type Questionnaire ) in order to analyze the relations between prospective memory and personality and intelligence. The result shows: prospective memory has salient correlations with Factor A, Factor F and Factor X3; and has salient correlation with the type of Temperament; but hasn't with intelligence.The first experiment researched event-based prospective memory, which discussed the effect of task importance, the striking of target event and the difficulty of on-going task on event-based prospective memory. The result shows: these three factors have salient effect on the performance of prospective memory.The second experiment researched activity -based prospective memory, which discussed the effect of task importance, the way of presenting direction and the difficulty of on-going task on activity-based prospective memory. The result shows: the effect of task importance and the difficulty of on-going task have salient effect on the performance of prospective memory, while the way of presenting direction hasn't.The third experiment researched time-based prospective memory, which discussed the effect of task importance and the way of monitoring time on time-based prospective memory. The result shows: the effect of task importance has salient effect on the performance of prospective memory, while the way of monitoring time hasn't.The fourth experiment compared three kinds of prospective memory. The result shows: the performance of time-based prospective memory is salient lower event-based and activity-based prospective memory, while event-based and activity-based prospective memory hasn't salient difference.