Comparative Study On Strategic Processing And Controlled Processing Of Prospective Memory

Prospective memory refers to the memory of performing previously planned events and activities at an appropriate time or situation in the future.It is a kind of memory that is very common in life.It often has different degrees of delay from its intention to intentional execution,so it is a memory that points to the future.When the concept of prospective memory was first proposed,most of the research was in the natural context,and it was difficult to carry out strict control.Since the limitations of the research methods were not deeply studied,after the dual task paradigm was proposed,it was transferred to strict laboratory control,and research on it began to enrich.Most of the current research focuses on exploring influencing factors and establishing theoretical models.The influencing factors that researchers have discovered are age,cognitive style,mood,characteristics of prospective memory itself(characteristics of target clues,importance of prospective memory,etc.),characteristics of ongoing tasks,and so on.In terms of theoretical models,there are simple activation model,noticing-search model,preparatory attentional processes and memory processes theory,multiprocess view.In addition,there is a three-process automatic activation model,it believes that in addition to automatic processing and strategic processing,there is also a controlled processing.In previous studies,strategic processing and controlled processing were used as synonyms,but the three-processing automatic activation model distinguishes these two concepts and treats them as different processing methods.In the three-process automatic activation model,automatic processing has no explicit search process and does not occupy cognitive resources,subjects often report that prospective memory pop into the mind;while strategic processing and controlled processing consumes cognitive resources.It also interferes with ongoing tasks and has a PM cost.The difference is that there is no explicit search process for strategic processing,and controlled processing is consciously searching.According to the model,there is a difference between the controlled processing and the strategic processing in the presence or absence of the explicit search process.Therefore,the experiment 1 in this study verifies from the empirical point whether the two processing methods have the differences assumed by the model..Experiment 2 further explores whether the effects of these two processing methods on prospective memory are the same.The experiment uses the classic dual-task paradigm,the ongoing task is the color matching task,and the prospective memory task is to presses the specified button for the occurrence of a specific vocabulary(clues).Experiment 1 uses a two-factor hybrid design of 2(task type: single task,dual-task)× 2(processing method: strategic processing,controlled processing),the task type is the within-subject factor,the processing method is the between-subject factor,and the response time and the accuracy are dependent variables.Experiment 2 uses a two-factor hybrid design of 2(processing method: strategic processing,controlled processing)× 2(number of clues:1 and 3),the processing method is the between-subject variable,and the number of clues is the within-subject variable.The response time and accuracy of the dual-task are dependent variables.The results were analyzed by a Multinomial Processing Tree(MPT)to compare the difference in performance between the prospective component and the retrospective component in different processing methods.The research results suggest that there are differences between strategic processing and controlled processing in the following aspects: a):Different levels of consciousness,the search process of strategic processing is implicit,and the controlled processing is explicit;b)the occupation of cognitive resources is different,the controlled processing takes more resources than the strategic processing;c)controlled processing is beneficial to the completion of the prospective memory,and the accuracy and response time are better than the strategic processing.The difference between the two methods is mainly in the prospective component,when there are more clues,strategic processing cannot provide sufficient cognitive resources for monitoring clues.;d)The controlled processing is less affected by the change in the number of clues,the results are relatively stable,and the strategic processing is susceptible to the change in the number of clues..The study supports the hypothesis of three-process automatic activation models.