The Effect Of Difficulty Of Prospective Memory Task, Temporal Switch And Time Personality On Time-based Prospective Memory

Time-based prospective memory (TBPM) refers to the individual remembers todo the previously formed intentional activity at some particular point in the future orafter a time interval. Most of the previous research needed the participants to checktime frequently, while people in the real life may form or alter their expectations un-der different tasks and the personality traits related to time may exert some influenceson the performance. Therefore, the present research examined the impact of difficultyof prospective memory task, Temporal Switch, and ime personality on TBPM, in ord-er to reveal individual’s allocation of cognitive resources and the underlying cognitiveprocesses of TBPM.With judging the realness of two Chinese words as ongoing task and conductingtarget reaction in different time intervals as TBPM task, the research asked the partici-pants(university students) remembering to finish the TBPM task as well as the ongoi-ng task. Three experiments as followed are included in this research:Experiment1examined the influence of difficulty of the TBPM task(low and hi-gh) and propective time interval(1min and3min) on TBPM. The difficulty of TBPMtask was divided into two categaries according to clock checking, namely TBPM taskwith clock checking was low difficulty and the one without clock checking was highdifficulty. The results showed that the performance on the ongoing task of low diffic-ulty or long time interval and its prospective interference effect were worse thanthose of high difficulty or short time interval. What’s more, the achievement on theTBPM task of low difficulty or short time interval was higher than that of high diffic-ulty or long time interval. Further analyses revealed that under the short time interval,the performance on the ongoing task of low difficulty was worse than that of high dif-ficulty; while under the long time interval, the case was just the opposite. Moreover,under the low difficulty, the achievement on the TBPM task of short time interval wasnot significantly different with that of long time interval; while under high difficulty,the former was better than the latter.Experiment2discussed the effect of temporal switch and difficulty of the TBPMtask on TBPM. Temporal switch was seperated into temporal decrease(2min-1min),temporal conformity(2min-2min) and temporal increase(2min-3min), the participantsneeded to remember no more than two TBPM tasks and execute them in different sta-ges. The results showed that RT on the ongoing task of temporal conformity was thelongest and that of temporal increase was the shortest, ACCs on the ongoing task ofeach temporal groups were higher under low difficulty than under high difficulty and RTs of them were longer before than after temporal switch. Besides, the achievementson the TBPM task of temporal conformity, high difficulty or before temporal switchwere respectively worse than those of temporal decrease, low difficulty or after temp-oral switch. Further analyses found that under low difficulty, ACC on the ongoingtask of temporal conformity was the highest and that of temporal increase was the thelowest; while under high difficulty, the case was just the other way around, and theachievement on the TBPM task of temporal decrease was better than those of tempo-ral conformity and temporal increase. Meanwhile no matter before or after temporalswitch, the participants’ performance on the TBPM task were better under low diffic-ulty than under high difficulty.Experiment3brought in time personality and classified the participants accord-ing to Time Personality Indicator(Francis&Robertson,1999) in order to observe thedifferences of their performance on the TBPM task. The results showed that the parti-cipants of low time personality performed slower on the ongoing task under shorttime interval than under long time interval, while those of high time personality perf-ormed similarly under two kinds of time interval. In addition, the participants of lowtime personality performed worse on the TBPM task and check the clock less freque-ntly than those of high time personality, but they showed no significant difference onthe accuracy of clock checking.Further still, the all of the three experiments above found that the participantsrarely check the clock at beginning of the experiments, but with the approach of thetarget time, they checked the clock more and more frequently, that is to say, they allshowed a J-like curve on clock checking.Finally, Experiment1(prospective time was unanimous) discovered that RT onthe ongoing task showed a V-like curve and ACC showed a∧-like curve. WhileExp-eriment2(prospective time was altered) found out that the single pattern of thosetwo kinds of curves became changed, in other words, RT and ACC on the ongoingtask both showed V-like and∧-like curves after temporal switch, indicating that theparti-cipants of different groups tended to behave dissimilarly.