Interrupting intentions: Zeigarnik-like effects in prospective memory

Mäntylä, Timo; Sgaramella, Teresa Maria

doi:10.1007/bf00419767

Cited by 30 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…For example, in the study of Zeigarnik (1927) participants were interrupted by the experimenter half way through a task(s) (see also Mäntylä & Sgaramella, 1997). In the present study, there was no external agent interrupting an ongoing activity when children encountered a target picture of an animal.…”

Section: Prospective Memory In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 72%

Prospective memory in children: The effects of age and task interruption.

Kvavilashvili¹,

Messer²,

Ebdon³

2001

Developmental Psychology

163

194

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Prospective memory (PM), remembering to carry out a task in the future, is highly relevant to children's everyday functioning, yet relatively little is known about it. For these reasons the effects of age and task interruption on PM were studied in 3 experiments. Children, aged 4-, 5-, and 7-years, were asked to name pictures in stacks of cards (the ongoing task) and to remember to do something when they saw a target picture (the PM task). Significant age differences were identified, but age explained only a small amount of variance. As predicted, children in the no-interruption condition performed significantly better than those who had to interrupt the ongoing activity in order to carry out the PM task. An additional finding was that no relation was detected between performance on prospective and retrospective memory tasks.

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Section: Prospective Memory In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 72%

Prospective memory in children: The effects of age and task interruption.

Kvavilashvili¹,

Messer²,

Ebdon³

2001

Developmental Psychology

163

194

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, inadvertently taking certain medication twice can be highly dangerous for the individual. Once an intention has been realized, the memory for the intended action vanishes, an effect known as the Zeigarnik effect (Zeigarnik, 1927; Mäntylä and Sgaramella, 1997). Upon completion of an intention, the monitoring of the environment for cues that are associated with the intended action, is discontinued (Scullin et al, 2009; Beck et al, 2014), which is associated with the deactivation of brain areas that are engaged in monitoring processes during the active phase of the intention (Beck et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consolidation of Prospective Memory: Effects of Sleep on Completed and Reinstated Intentions

et al. 2017

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Sleep has been shown to facilitate the consolidation of prospective memory, which is the ability to execute intended actions at the appropriate time in the future. In a previous study, the sleep benefit for prospective memory was mainly expressed as a preservation of prospective memory performance under divided attention as compared to full attention. Based on evidence that intentions are only remembered as long as they have not been executed yet (cf. ‘Zeigarnik effect’), here we asked whether the enhancement of prospective memory by sleep vanishes if the intention is completed before sleep and whether completed intentions can be reinstated to benefit from sleep again. In Experiment 1, subjects learned cue-associate word pairs in the evening and were prospectively instructed to detect the cue words and to type in the associates in a lexical decision task (serving as ongoing task) 2 h later before a night of sleep or wakefulness. At a second surprise test 2 days later, sleep and wake subjects did not differ in prospective memory performance. Specifically, both sleep and wake groups detected fewer cue words under divided compared to full attention, indicating that sleep does not facilitate the consolidation of completed intentions. Unexpectedly, in Experiment 2, reinstating the intention, by instructing subjects about the second test after completion of the first test, was not sufficient to restore the sleep benefit. However, in Experiment 3, where subjects were instructed about both test sessions immediately after learning, sleep facilitated prospective memory performance at the second test after 2 days, evidenced by comparable cue word detection under divided attention and full attention in sleep participants, whereas wake participants detected fewer cue words under divided relative to full attention. Together, these findings show that for prospective memory to benefit from sleep, (i) the intention has to be active across the sleep period, and (ii) the intention should be induced in temporal proximity to the initial learning session.

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“…Few studies have directly addressed the influence on PM of an unexpected, external interruption, such as a person-initiated interruption unrelated to the ongoing task (Mantyla & Sgaramella, 1997;McDaniel, Einstein, Graham, & Rall, 2004). Early work on how PM performance may be affected by an interruption was conducted by Mantyla and Sgaramella (1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Early work on how PM performance may be affected by an interruption was conducted by Mantyla and Sgaramella (1997). These authors reported that cue items associated with interruption were better reminders than were items that were associated with completion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of aging, planning, and interruption on complex prospective memory

Shum

Cahill

Hohaus

et al. 2013

Neuropsychological Rehabilitation

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This study examined the effects of aging, planning, and interruption on complex prospective memory (PM) using a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects design. Participants were 80 younger adults (65 females) aged 18-33 years and 80 older adults (70 females) aged 60 -75 years. They were randomly allocated to four conditions (viz., no interruption and no planning, interruption but no planning, planning but no interruption, and both planning and interruption) and asked to undertake three PM tasks (time-, event-, and activity-based) while performing an ongoing task (viz., recipe checking and identification) in a simulated home environment. Younger adults were found to perform significantly better than older adults on time-and event-based PM. The opportunity to plan for five minutes was found to improve performances on all three types of PM. Unexpected, external interruptions, on the other hand, were found to reduce performance for time-based PM. Interestingly, planning was found to significantly improve the performance of older adults on time-based PM and to a level similar to that of younger adults. Results of the study have clarified the independent and interactive effects of the three variables on PM and have implications for understanding and enhancing this type of memory.

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Interrupting intentions: Zeigarnik-like effects in prospective memory

Cited by 30 publications

References 24 publications

Prospective memory in children: The effects of age and task interruption.

Prospective memory in children: The effects of age and task interruption.

Consolidation of Prospective Memory: Effects of Sleep on Completed and Reinstated Intentions

Effects of aging, planning, and interruption on complex prospective memory

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