Distracted Tasks Increase The Risk Of Individuals Making Execution Errors And Type II Coding Reduces This Risk

Most prospective memory researches examined the influencing factors and mechanisms of executing delayed intentions,but the ability to deactivate completed or cancelled intention is similarly important.One view is that intentions can be deactivated immediately after completion,so they no longer interfere with current cognitive tasks;another view proposes that the presentation of completed intentions exhibits persisting activation,and continues come to mind interfering current tasks.The goal of present research was to determine whether people continue retrieving completed intentions after prospective memory tasks had been finished,which may cause aftereffects of completed intentions.In experiment 1,participants were asked to perform a prospective memory task embedded within the ongoing task in phase 1;then they were told the prospective memory tsk had been completed or suspended;either 5 or 15 minutes after the end of phase 1,participants entered phase 2,during which participants were instructed to perform only the lexical decision task.Reaction time and commission errors were recorded.We found aftereffects of completed intentions in both instructions,but we didn't get evidence of specific time course of prospective memory aftereffects.In experiment 2,we manipulated prior prospective memory task performance and odd-digit monitoring task to explore the influencing factors of aftereffects.During phase 1,we guided participant encoding two separating intentions,but only one intention could be executed.During phase 2,half of the participant performed a digit-monitoring task besides lexical decision task.We found that divided attention produced more commission errors,and the performance of prospective task did not influence the aftereffects of completed intentions.Commission error is a typical human error,which may cause fatal accident in industrial production.The aim of experimental 3 was to examine whether ? encoding could effectively reduce commission error in divided attention condition.? encoding consists of a statement of the form "if situation x occurs,then I will perform intention y,"and it is accompanied by mental visualization.Participants were asked to repeat "when cues occur again,I will not push the Space button,and I will push the button 1 to perform lexical decision tasks",and image the procedure for 1 minute.Data demonstrated that ?encoding,which forge strong "cue-lexical decision task" associative links,could reduce commission errors in divided attention condition.