The Mechanism Of Aftereffect On Prospective Memory

Prospective memory commission errors refer to the execution of an intended action such as taking medication after dinner when,in fact,the intended action should not be performed.At present,the study of the prospective memory commission errors mainly focus on its factors of influences,while the research on the processing mechanism of prospective memory commission errors is less.There are three main points of view in the existing research to explain the mechanism of prospective memory commission errors:(1)in the implementation of prospective memory task block,the subjects have formed an automatic response.Therefore,after the completed intention block,the subjects will spontaneously retrieve the action as soon as meeting the cues previous,leading to repeated response.This view suggests that the effect of the prospective memory commission errors does not require the consumption of cognitive resources.(2)after implementation intention encoding,the relevant intention has a strong activation,the subjects will still searching for the cues to perform intended action which should not be performed,thus make mistakes.(3)the subjects have formed a strong association between a target and an intended action when they are told not to perform prospective memory tasks,they should consume cognitive resources to suppress the completed intention.When the input resources are insufficient,commission errors will appear.The latter two points of view both believe that the emergence of commission errors need to consume cognitive resources.The purpose of this study is to test these three possible hypothesis to determine the processing mechanism in the prospective memory commission errors.In this study,experiment 1 aims to explore whether the prospective memory commission errors needs to consume additional cognitive resources through the effect of the cues significance on commission errors.On the basis of experiment 1,experimental 2 examines the effect of significance cue and practice on the prospective memory commission errors,to further confirm the possibility of emergence of commission errors whether rely on automatic processes or controlled processes.On the basis of experiment 1 and 2,experiment 3 aim to further explore whether the consumption of cognitive resources on prospective memory commission errors are used to monitor the completed cues or inhibit the completed intention.The results of this study are as follows:(1)subjects under the conditions of the significance cue are more likely to repeat commission errors;(2)the emergence of prospective memory commission errors needs to consume cognitive resources;(3)the essential causes of prospective memory commission errors is that lacking sufficient cognitive resources to suppress the completed intention.