Neue Publikation im Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Abstract (pre-proof):

In everyday life, we frequently retrieve an intention, but the execution of the task needs to be delayed due to ongoing task demands – so-called delay-execute prospective memory (PM) tasks. We investigated commission errors in the delay-execute paradigm. Participants were told that a PM task is finished (PM task has been executed and is now finished for the rest of the experiment) or cancelled (PM was been cancelled immediately after introduction and was never executed) and observed commission errors and ongoing task performance in a final phase which included several irrelevant PM cues. In two experiments, we observed significantly more commission errors in the cancelled group compared to the finished group. In Experiment 2, we found that commission errors were eliminated if the final phase required divided attention, regardless of PM task status. In addition, we observed significantly more PM cue interference on the ongoing task in the cancelled compared to the finished group, indicating that the PM task was retrieved in the cancelled group but not in the finished group. As retrieval and execution of the PM task were separated by a delay, the results indicate that commission errors are not always the result of a quick, spontaneous retrieval-execution sequence may also occur when retrieval and execution are temporally separated.

Schaper, P., & Grundgeiger, T. (in press). Commission errors in delay-execute prospective memory tasks. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. doi:10.1080/17470218.2016.1187182