The Influence Of Target Context Specification On Strategic Prospective Memory Monitoring And Two Components

Prospective memory task interference effect refers to the fact that the participants perform the prospective memory task that will affect the performance of the ongoing task(the response become slower).Target context specification refers to inform participants about the specific items where targets can occur.Some studies have shown that the target context specification can affect task interference,that is,target context specification can reduce the task interference of the irrelevant context,what refer to as “strategic monitoring”.Strategic monitoring involves: encoding of the prospective memory intention,binding of the intention to the relevant context,maintaining the connection of intention-context,identification of context while engaging in ongoing task,using monitoring when identifying relevant context,and not using monitoring when identifying irrelevant context.Studies have shown that strategic monitoring depends on limited cognitive resources.So when the ongoing task or the prospective memory task occupies more cognitive resources,it will affect the individual’s strategic monitoring and the performance of prospective memory and its two components?Therefore,this study mainly explores the effects of target context specificity on the strategic prospective memory monitoring and two components under different cognitive loads.Both experiment 1 and 2 manipulated the ongoing task load,but experiment 1presented the stimulus in a random way,and experiment 2 presented the stimulus in mini block(the stimulus type changes once every 20 stimuli).The two presentation modes mainly constitute the difficulty degree of context recognition.It’s the purpose of experiments 1 and 2 that to explore the underlying processes of the strategic prospective memory monitoring,and the influence of target context specificity on the two components of prospective memory.Experiment 3 manipulated the prospective memory task load(different number of prospective memory targets),and explored the impact of target context specificity on strategic prospective memory monitoring and two components under different numbers of prospective memory targets.Through three studies,the following result were obtained:(1)when context recognition needs higher attentional demands,the ongoing task load can affect the impact of target context specificity on strategic prospective memory monitoring.Under the low load of ongoing task,participants can use strategic monitoring based on the target context specificity(reduce the monitoring of irrelevant context);Under the high load,it difficult for participants to use strategic monitoring based on the target context specificity.(2)when context recognition needs lower attentional demands(easy to identify the relevant context),the ongoing task load cannot affect strategic monitoring;The result shows that strategic prospective memory monitoring depends on limited cognitive resources,what is easily restricted by the context recognition.(3)When the number of prospective memory targets is low,participants in specific conditions monitored the relevant context,which is similar to non-specific conditions.Therefore,target context specificity in this case doesn’t improve the performance of the prospective component and the prospective memory.When the number of prospective memory targets is large,strategic monitoring shown by the participants is different from those with fewer prospective memory targets.Participants not only relaxed the monitoring of irrelevant context,but also strengthened the monitoring of relevant context.Therefore,participants in specific conditions can affect the performance of the prospective memory by affecting the performance of the prospective components when there are many targets.These results suggest that strategic prospective memory monitoring depends on limited cognitive resources,what is easily restricted by the context recognition;specific conditions can affect the performance of the prospective components when there are many targets...