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Evidence has begun to accumulate showing that successful performance of event-based prospective memory (PM) comes at a cost to other ongoing activities. The current study builds on previous work by examining the cost associated with PM when the target event is salient. Target salience is among the criteria for automatic retrieval of intentions according to the multiprocess view of PM. An alternative theory, the preparatory attentional and memory processes theory, argues that PM performance, including retrieval of the intent, is never automatic and successful performance always will come at a cost to other ongoing activity. The 4 experiments reported here used a salient PM target event. In addition, Experiments 3 and 4 were designed to meet the stringent criteria proposed for automatic retrieval of intentions by multiprocess theory, and, yet, in all 4 experiments, delayed intentions interfered with ongoing task performance.

Roediger and McDermott (1995)rejuvenated interest in Deese's (1959) paradigm for producing reliable intrusions and false alarms. Using this paradigm in three experiments, we demonstrated that visual study presentation dramatically reduces the rate of false memories. Only auditory study presentation resulted in equal production of studied and critical items. Correct recall and recognition were unaffected. The suggestion that visual presentation provides a means for discriminating between false and true memories was supported by Experiment 3: Pleasantness rating of study items significantly reduced the creation of false memories regardless of modality.False memories can be created reliably by presenting lists of words that are all strong associates of a nonpresented word. The strong associate usually is recalled and recognized at the same rate as that for presented items. This laboratory technique for invoking predictable intrusions or false alarms has received considerable attention in the literature following Roediger and McDermott's (1995) replication and extension of Deese's (1959) work.The experiments that we report here were motivated by an interest in the effects of item-specific processing of list words on recall of the critical, nonpresented associates. Item-specific processing is assumed to affect a discriminative process of distinctiveness at retrieval. Thus, item-specific processing of list words may facilitate discrimination of those items from nonpresented items and thereby reduce the level of false memory. We began this research by using a powerful item-specific study task that requires subjects to report one thing that is different about an item from all other items in the list (Hunt & Smith, 1996). Unfortunately, we were unable to evaluate the proposed role of distinctive processing because we failed to create false memories at a rate equivalent to true memories in the control condition of that experiment, a condition comparable to the critical conditions ofRoediger and McDermott (1995). As it happened, we had inadvertently changed an apparently important aspect of the experimental paradigm: modality oflist presentation. Our items were presented via a computer monitor, and the results showed unusually low levels of intrusions in conditions that normally yield critical intrusions at the same rate as that for actually studied items. A search of We thank Robert Crowder, Arthur Glenberg, David Payne, and Henry Roediger for helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This research was supported in part by funds from the Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro granted to the second author. Correspondence may be addressed to R. E. Smith or R. R. Hunt, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, 27412 (e-mail: resmith@hamlet.uncg. edu or huntrr@hamlet.uncg.edu).the literature supported our suspicions that visual presentation was the cause of this reduction.'All published reports of created memories obtained with the Roedig...

The isolation effect is a well-known memory phenomenon whose discovery is frequently attributed to von Restorff (1933). If all but one item of a list are similar on some dimension, memory for the different item will be enhanced. Modern theory of the isolation effect emphasizes perceptual salience and accompanying differential attention to the isolated item as necessary for enhanced memory. In fact, von Restorff, whose paper is not available in English, presented evidence that perceptual salience is not necessary for the isolation effect. She further argued that the difference between the isolated and surrounding items is not sufficient to produce isolation effects but must be considered in the context of similarity. Von Restorff's reasoning and data have implications for the use of distinctiveness in contemporary memory research, where distinctiveness is sometimes defined as perceptual salience and sometimes as a theoretical process of discrimination. As a theoretical construct, distinctiveness is a useful description of the effects of differences even in the absence of perceptual salience, but distinctiveness must be used in conjunction with constructs referring to similarity to provide an adequate account of the isolation effect and probably any other memory phenomena.