Don’t you forget about me : overlooked factors in prospective memory research

Prospective Memory refers to the ability to perform an intended action in the future, such as buying milk on the way home from work. Contemporary prospective memory research typically requires participants to perform an ongoing task (such as lexical decision) with further instructions to perform an alternative (or additional) task when they encounter a PM cue, such as a stimulus presented in a specific colour. This thesis investigates important overlooked factors affecting performance in this paradigm with the use of the prospective memory decision control (PMDC) computational model. The first chapter provides an overview of the relevant prospective memory literature, as well as an overview of the PMDC model and the role it plays in understanding the cognitive processes involved in prospective memory performance. The second chapter examines how altering the response method used in this paradigm can improve PM performance. The third chapter examines the effect of ongoing task load in this paradigm. The fourth chapter, a follow-up to the previous chapter, examines the effect of ongoing task difficulty. The fifth chapter examines the effect of PM cue frequency in this paradigm. In the sixth chapter, I discuss the findings of the studies, the theoretical and practical implications of the thesis, the limitations of the studies, and directions for future research