| Prospective memory is the ability to execute the deferred intention at a specific time in the future.Constrained by various conditions,individuals often cannot perform the desired operation immediately,and need to delay the intention for either a longer or a short time until the condition is met.So,in daily life,individuals use a lot of external reminders to improve their memory performance,such as using memos,post-it notes or setting a reminder on the smartphone.However,in the air traffic control(ATC),the controllers need to monitor a variety of complex dynamic visual information simultaneously,so when designing an external aid to improve PM performance,it is necessary to balance the effectiveness of reminding with the interference to other tasks.Based on the multi-processing theory,this study examined the effect of intention delay intervals and external memory aids on prospective memory in ATC simulated tasks by analyzing three indicators:prospective tasks performance,primary tasks performance and subjective evaluation.We used animation to simulate the multitasking operation settings in ATC in this study.The primary tasks included take-off,landing and parking apron selection,while the prospective tasks were to accept the target aircrafts with a different key.The first study used a 2(intention delay interval:long and short)× 3(external memory aids:without aids,semi-dynamic aids and dynamic aids)between-subjects design to investigate the effect of intention delay intervals on prospective memory performance and the moderating effect of external memory aids.Then,the second study used a 2(color of the memory aids:consistent to the target and inconsistent)× 2(relative location of the aids:adjacent to the target and nonadjacent)between-subjects design to further explored the effect of relative position and color characteristics of the aids on prospective memory performance under the longer delay condition as well as the subjective evaluation of the aids on their effectiveness and interference.Through these two studies,we found that:(1)in the ATC simulation tasks,prospective memory intention interfered with the performance of primary tasks,which was specifically reflected on the increase of reaction time in this simulated setting.Furthermore,with the increase of intention delay interval,the performance of prospective tasks decreased and the interference to the primary task increased.(2)the use of memory aids effectively reduced the negative impact of delay interval on the performance of primary tasks so that there were no significant differences in the performance of the primary tasks at different delay intervals.Meanwhile the performance of the prospective tasks was improved compared with that of using no aids.(3)dynamic aids were better than semi-dynamic aids both on tasks performance and subjective evaluation.Subjects using the dynamic aids had better performance on prospective tasks and less interference to primary tasks compared with semi-dynamic aids.(4)the different color of the aids had no significant effect on the effectiveness of reminding under the longer delay interval condition,but the relative position of the aids could predict the performance of prospective memory.Aids that appeared near the target brought better prospective tasks performance and reduced the cost on primary tasks,while getting a higher subjective impression rating on its reminding effectiveness.In the complex dynamic settings,when an individual executes a delayed intention,it often interferes with the other tasks due to the increase of cognitive load.We found that the use of external memory aids could significantly improve the performance of prospective memory both of prospective tasks and primary tasks.In addition,the location of the aids should be considered when designing them,because the aids appear within the focus of attention work better.This study provides a psychological basis for designing more effective memory aids to improve prospective memory performance in air traffic control and other multi-tasks monitoring settings. |
