Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, USA.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2010 Jan;36(1):190-203. doi: 10.1037/a0017732.
To examine the processes that support prospective remembering, previous research has often examined whether the presence of a prospective memory task slows overall responding on an ongoing task. Although slowed task performance suggests that monitoring is present, this method does not clearly establish whether monitoring is functionally related to prospective memory performance. According to the multiprocess theory (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000), monitoring should be necessary to prospective memory performance with nonfocal cues but not with focal cues. To test this hypothesis, we varied monitoring by presenting items that were related (or unrelated) to the prospective memory task proximal to target events. Notably, whereas monitoring proximal to target events led to a large increase in nonfocal prospective memory performance, focal prospective remembering was high in the absence of monitoring, and monitoring in this condition provided no additional benefits. These results suggest that when monitoring is absent, spontaneous retrieval processes can support focal prospective remembering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).
为了研究支持前瞻性记忆的过程，先前的研究通常考察前瞻性记忆任务的存在是否会减缓正在进行的任务的整体反应速度。尽管任务表现的减缓表明存在监测，但这种方法并不能明确确定监测是否与前瞻性记忆表现具有功能相关性。根据多重加工理论（McDaniel & Einstein，2000），对于非焦点线索，监测应该是前瞻性记忆表现所必需的，但对于焦点线索则不是。为了检验这一假设，我们通过在目标事件附近呈现与前瞻性记忆任务相关（或不相关）的项目来改变监测。值得注意的是，虽然在目标事件附近的监测导致非焦点前瞻性记忆表现大幅提高，但在没有监测的情况下，焦点前瞻性记忆表现较高，而在这种情况下的监测并没有提供额外的好处。这些结果表明，当监测不存在时，自发检索过程可以支持焦点前瞻性记忆。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2009 APA，保留所有权利）。
