Schaper Philipp, Grundgeiger Tobias
Institute for Human-Computer-Media, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2019 Oct;72(10):2380-2392. doi: 10.1177/1747021819840583. Epub 2019 Apr 11.
It is often necessary to retrieve intentions once a certain cue occurs in the environment. However, such prospective memory (PM) tasks can also be erroneously recalled even though they are no longer relevant and may result in commission errors. According to the dual mechanism account, commission errors occur because the intention is spontaneously retrieved, and there is a subsequent failure to suppress the associated action, resulting in erroneous instant execution. In three experiments, we tested whether failed response suppression is a prerequisite for commission errors. We set up a response lag condition in which participants had to delay their response to ongoing task trials for 1 s (Experiment 1) or 2 s (Experiments 2 and 3) and a pause condition in which the delay occurred between ongoing task trials. In both conditions, participants learned about a PM task and were then told that the PM task was cancelled. In addition, a control group with response lag executed the PM task and was subsequently told the task was finished. Later, all participants encountered several irrelevant PM cues. If failed response suppression is a prerequisite for commission errors, commission error rates should be non-existent in the response lag conditions, because participants had designated time to suppress the PM action. However, commission errors occurred at an equal rate in all lag and pause conditions. Due to this contradiction to the dual mechanism account, we suggest that the process for commission error occurrence should be reconsidered. Because commission errors appear not to be caused by failed response suppression, we discuss the idea that erroneous intentions might be formed when encountering the former PM cue and persist over delays between formation and execution.
一旦环境中出现特定线索，往往需要检索意图。然而，即使这些前瞻性记忆（PM）任务已不再相关，它们也可能被错误地回忆起来，并可能导致执行错误。根据双重机制理论，执行错误的发生是因为意图被自动检索，随后又未能抑制相关行动，从而导致错误的即时执行。在三个实验中，我们测试了反应抑制失败是否是执行错误的先决条件。我们设置了一个反应延迟条件，即参与者必须将对正在进行的任务试验的反应延迟1秒（实验1）或2秒（实验2和3），以及一个暂停条件，即延迟发生在正在进行的任务试验之间。在这两种条件下，参与者都了解了一项前瞻性记忆任务，然后被告知该前瞻性记忆任务已取消。此外，一个有反应延迟的对照组执行了前瞻性记忆任务，随后被告知任务已完成。后来，所有参与者都遇到了几个不相关的前瞻性记忆线索。如果反应抑制失败是执行错误的先决条件，那么在反应延迟条件下应该不存在执行错误率，因为参与者有指定的时间来抑制前瞻性记忆行动。然而，在所有延迟和暂停条件下，执行错误的发生率是相同的。由于这与双重机制理论相矛盾，我们建议重新考虑执行错误发生的过程。因为执行错误似乎不是由反应抑制失败引起的，我们讨论了这样一种观点，即当遇到以前的前瞻性记忆线索时可能会形成错误意图，并在形成和执行之间的延迟中持续存在。
