Prospective memory tasks are often accomplished during the performance of other activities. Despite the dual-task nature of prospective memory, little attention has been paid to how successful prospective memory performance affects ongoing activities. In the first 2 experiments, participants performing an embedded prospective memory task had longer response times on nonprospective memory target trials of a lexical decision task than participants performing the lexical decision task alone. In the prospective memory groups, longer lexical decision response times were associated with better prospective memory performance (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), a pattern not demonstrated with an embedded retrospective memory task (Experiment 2). The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the retrieval of a delayed intention, or the prospective component, can require capacity.

Prospective memory is remembering to perform an action in the future. The authors introduce the 1st formal model of event-based prospective memory, namely, a multinomial model that includes 2 separate parameters related to prospective memory processes. The 1st measures preparatory attentional processes, and the 2nd measures retrospective memory processes. The model was validated in 4 experiments. Manipulations of instructions to place importance on either the prospective memory task or the background task (Experiments 1 and 2) and manipulations of distinctiveness of prospective memory targets (Experiment 2) had expected effects on model parameters, as did a manipulation of the difficulty of prospective memory target encoding (Experiments 3 and 4). An alternative model was also evaluated.

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...

A feature of prospective memory tasks is that they tend to be embedded into other background activities. Two experiments examined how the demands of these background activities affect age differences in prospective memory. The first experiment showed that increasing the demands of the background activities (by adding a digit-monitoring task) significantly reduced prospective memory performance. Planned comparisons revealed that age differences in prospective memory were reliable only in the more demanding background condition. The second experiment revealed significant prospective memory declines when the demands were selectively increased at encoding for both younger and older adults. When the demands were selectively increased at retrieval, older adults were particularly affected. The authors propose a model that relies on both automatic retrieval processes and working memory resources to explain prospective memory remembering.