The Influence of Target Event Frequency on Prospective Memory

Successful performance of a delayed intention task relies on recognition that a target event provides a signal for the retrieval and realization of the intention. We conducted repeated-instance event-based dual-task experiments in which the same action should be performed regardless of what particular target event occurs during an ongoing activity. We report two experiments that investigated important dimensions of this task design, and explored their influence on prospective remembering. The results suggested that the variations in the frequencies of target event influenced overall performance: relatively high frequency of target event improved prospective remembering. Performance was lower when target events were embedded in more difficult ongoing tasks. There was improvement of reaction time over presentations during ongoing tasks when remembering was compared for the first and final set of target events. As a result, it was suggested that the weight on the prospective memory task improved the performance of prospective memory task