Cost avoidance underlies decisions to use prospective memory reminders.

Recent evidence suggests that offloading demands on to external sources can improve the remembering of future plans (i.e., prospective memory). The purpose of the current study was to better understand the mechanisms by which participants choose to offload prospective memory demands. Participants fo...

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Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 53; no. 6; pp. 1785 - 1803
Autores principales: Ball, B. Hunter, Peper, Phil
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Aug2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      pub: Springer Nature
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        10.3758/s13421-025-01683-3
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        atl: Cost avoidance underlies decisions to use prospective memory reminders.
      aug:
        au:
          Ball, B. Hunter
          Peper, Phil
        affil:
          https://ror.org/019kgqr73 Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington, 501 Nedderman Drive, 76109, Arlington, TX, USA
          https://ror.org/05t99sp05 Department of Psychology, University of California, 900 University Ave, 92521, RiversideRiverside, CA, USA
      su:
        Task performance
        Exercise
        Episodic memory
        Consumer attitudes
        Decision making
        Distraction
        Punishment
        Time management
        Cognition
        Cost control
        Research funding
        Descriptive statistics
        Experimental design
        Intention
        Health care reminder systems
      sug:
        subj:
          Task performance
          Exercise
          Episodic memory
          Consumer attitudes
          Decision making
          Distraction
          Punishment
          Time management
          Cognition
          Cost control
          Research funding
          Descriptive statistics
          Experimental design
          Intention
          Health care reminder systems
      keyword:
        Effort
        Metacognition
        Offloading
        Prospective memory
        Reminders
        Effort
        Metacognition
        Offloading
        Prospective memory
        Reminders
      ab: Recent evidence suggests that offloading demands on to external sources can improve the remembering of future plans (i.e., prospective memory). The purpose of the current study was to better understand the mechanisms by which participants choose to offload prospective memory demands. Participants formed the intention to later respond to either one (low load) or four (high load) prospective memory targets with or without the use of reminders. During reminder trials, participants could press the "reminder" key to be shown the learned targets in a "lookup table." The frequency of reminder checking was used to index the willingness to rely on external sources to support remembering. The utility of reminder checking was manipulated by varying the number of distractors presented in the lookup table (Experiment 1), implementing a time penalty for checking the table (Experiment 2), and explicitly describing the effectiveness of using reminders (Experiment 3). The results consistently showed that participants checked reminders more frequently under high memory load (i.e., four targets). Moreover, participants checked reminders less frequently when the costs associated with doing so increased (Experiments 2 and 3). However, confidence in one's own memory ability was not associated with checking frequency. These findings suggest that participants choose to offload, at least in part, to reduce the time or effort to complete the task.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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