Guynn, M. J., McDaniel, M. A., & Einstein, G. O. (1998). Prospective memory: When reminders fail. Memory & Cognition, 26, 287-298.
The purpose of the present study was to determine whether reminders can benefit prospective memory. Ellis indicates that recollections (reminders) might refresh or strengthen the representation of the prospective memory by increasing the activation level, or by reformulating or altering the representation, such as increasing the distinctiveness/specificity of the retrieval context. Mantyla said that planning the prospective memory task might automatically increase activation of it, making it more likely that it will happen.
Experiments 1A and 1B
Subjects learned three prospective memory targets and were asked to circle those words if they were ever seen in the experiment. Intervening activities were completed. Then, the participants were given the task. In 1A this consisted of word completion, in 1B this consisted of completing anagrams. After the 25th, 50th and 75th word fragments, the participants put the page that they had been working on and, for those participants in the reminder condition, were given the reminder of “remember the three words that you studied at the beginning of the experiment.” The average delay between a reminder and a prospective target was 3.5 minutes.
Results
In 1A and 1B participants solved the same number of completion/anagrams, and there was no difference between participants that were given reminders and those who were not.
Experiment 2
The type of reminder presented to the participants was manipulated in this study. There are three predictions that could be made about the type of reminder
1)The associative link view (increasing the association between the target and the intention will increase prospective memory) implies that the type of reminder would be important.
2) Effective reminders might change the trace of the prospective memory by making the retrieval context more specific.
3)No effect of reminders because the prospective memories might exist at such a high level of activation anyway.
Participants were reminded at either 1 or 6 minutes. The reminders were target, target + action, target+action+context. Target reminders were “Remember the three words that you studied at the beginning of the experiment.” The target+action was “Remember what you have to do if you ever see any of those three words.” The target+action+context was the target + action reminder plus the instruction to “Imagine yourself actually doing that now in the word puzzle task.” There were also some control participants. The prospective memory task was similar to that in experiment 1A except that the computer would provide a completion for the word at the end of each trial.
Results
No main effects of delay. Target reminders did not improve prospective memory. Target + action reminder did improve prospective memory, showing more improvement than event he target+action+context reminder.
More target event word fragments were completed by participants that received reminders.
Experiment 3
In this experiment, the delay between the prospective memory instructions and the introduction of the cover task was manipulated ( 4 minutes and 20 minutes). There were also 4 groups of reminders: no reminder, target, action, target+action. The action reminder was “Remember the key that you have to press later in the experiment.”
Results
No main effects of delay. Main effects of target reminder presence and action reminder presence which means that target reminders did not improve prospective memory, but action and target + action reminders did improve prospective memory (with target+ action improving the most).
Participants receiving a target reminder were more likely to get those word completions correct. (Suggesting a dissociation – target reminders make it more likely for you to get the words in the word completion task, action reminders make it more likely for you to get the prospective cue).
Discussion
Reminders referring only to the target events do not improve prospective memory, but reminders that refer to the action, and more specifically, the target+action, do increase prospective memory, giving support for the associative link view.