The effects of motivational states on metacognition and prospective memory

Prospective memory is the ability to remember and act upon future intentions. In the context of daily life, prospective memory intentions can be either self-interested or pro-socially motivated (such as remembering to pay a credit card bill or buy a gift for a friend, respectively). Research suggests that individuals place greater importance on their performance of prosocial intentions rather than self-interested intentions, and a pro-social advantage has been observed in prospective memory. I investigated the role of motivation in prospective memory and a person’s belief about their cognitive abilities (i.e., metacognition) in regard to prospective memory. The present study used an eye-tracking paradigm in which participants were engaged in an ongoing visual search task, with a prospective memory task embedded into the trail. Participants’ motivational state was manipulated through a monetary incentive, and they also made predictions and postdictions about their performance on the prospective memory and ongoing tasks as a proxy for metacognition. I found a trend for a prosocial advantage to prospective memory performance and metacognitive awareness, and a tendency of neutral motivational states in reducing cognitive effort in prospective memory target monitoring. Such trends were not observed in the self-interested motivational state