On the representation of intentions: Do personally relevant consequences determine activation?

The intention-superiority effect describes shorter latencies for reactions to stimuli intended for future enactment, relative to stimuli associated with no enactment or canceled enactment. Previous attempts to demonstrate an intention-superiority effect for other types of tasks-for instance, observi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Memory & Cognition Vol. 39; no. 8; pp. 1487 - 1496
Autores principales: Schult, Janette, Steffens, Melanie
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Springer Nature Dec2011
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:The intention-superiority effect describes shorter latencies for reactions to stimuli intended for future enactment, relative to stimuli associated with no enactment or canceled enactment. Previous attempts to demonstrate an intention-superiority effect for other types of tasks-for instance, observing the experimenter executing actions-have not yielded an intention-superiority effect. A reason for this could be that the typical enactment task was associated with a higher degree of personal relevance than were other laboratory-based tasks and that task importance or its consequences heighten the accessibility of intention-relevant materials. In two experiments, we demonstrate an intention-superiority effect for different types of tasks (e.g., monitoring a video clip) when task realization has personally relevant consequences in terms of a performance evaluation. In contrast, we found no intention-superiority effect when future enactment had no personally relevant consequences for participants. These findings imply that the intention-superiority effect is not restricted to actions but occurs generally for relevant plans.