The Influence Of Task Difficulty And Task Type On Adolescents' TAP Effect In Prospective Memory

The ability to form, retain and later execute an intention without an explicit external agent that prompts a memory search when the retrieval context occurs, constitutes prospective memory, for short PM. According to previous studies, the performance of prospective memory is better when the processing types of the ongoing task and the prospective task are consistent, compared with the inconsistence situation,which is called transfer appropriate processing effect, for short TAP.According to previous studies, only few researchers have explored the influential factors of transfer appropriate processing effect, such as cognitive style, attention level, task importance,ongoing task's interruption and attraction degree, age, etc. However,there still lacks research about the influence of task difficulty and task type on the TAP effect. According to previous studies, the subjects is mostly adults or elders, while none of the study focus on adolescents. Therefore, this research regards adolescents as subjects, focusing on the influence of task difficulty and task type on the TAP effect.Using the classic dual-task experimental paradigm, this researchadopted the experimental design of 2(PM task difficulty: high, low)×2(ongoing task process type: perception processing; semantic processing) ×2(PM task process type: perception processing;semantic processing) completely between---subjects design. The independent variable is the prospective memory task difficulty and task type, and the dependent variables is the performances of prospective memory task and ongoing task. According to this experiment, the result shows that:1. Task difficulty and task type do have an effect on the performances of adolescents' TAP effect. When the PM task difficulty is low, whether the processing types of the two tasks of the prospective memory task and the ongoing task affect the prospective memory relies on the processing type of ongoing tasks. The TAP effect is found only when ongoing task is semantic. When the difficulty of the PM task is high, whether the processing types of the two tasks of the prospective memory task and the ongoing task are consistent does affect the performance of prospective memory.Whether the processing type of the ongoing task is semantic or perceptual, there both exists the TAP effect.2. Because of the difference of task difficulty, there are different TAP effect sizes. Compared with the low situation of prospective memory task difficulty, the high situation of prospective memory task difficulty will impair the TAP effect in a way.3. When the PM task is different, different task types have different influence on the adolescents' prospective memory. When the PM task is low, the performances of prospective memory task are the best when the processing types of the two tasks of the prospectivememory task and the ongoing task are both semantic or both perceptual; the performances of prospective memory task are the second when there are perceptual ongoing task and semantic prospective memory task; the performances of prospective memory task are the worst when there are semantic ongoing task and perceptual prospective memory task. When the PM task is high, the performances of prospective memory task are the best when the processing types of the two tasks of the prospective memory task and the ongoing task are both perceptual; the performances of prospective memory task are the second when the processing types of the two tasks of the prospective memory task and the ongoing task are both semantic and there are perceptual ongoing task and semantic prospective memory task; the performances of prospective memory task are the worst when there are semantic ongoing task and perceptual prospective memory task.