What can the diffusion model tell us about prospective memory?

Abstract

Cognitive process models, such as Ratcliff’s (1978) diffusion model, are useful tools for examining cost- or interference effects in event-based prospective memory (PM). The diffusion model includes several parameters that provide insight into how and why ongoing-task performance may be affected by a PM task and is ideally suited to analyze performance because both reaction time and accuracy are taken into account. Separate analyses of these measures can easily yield misleading interpretations in cases of speed-accuracy tradeoffs. The diffusion model allows us to measure possible criterion shifts and is thus an important methodological improvement over standard analyses. Performance in an ongoing lexical decision task (Smith, 2003) was analyzed with the diffusion model. The results suggest that criterion shifts play an important role when a PM task is added, but do not fully explain the cost effect on RT.

Performance predictions affect attentional processes of event-based prospective memory

“…No other main effects or interactions reached significance for these two parameters, all Fs < 1. These results suggest that the presence of a PM intention resulted in the engagement of additional processing while performing the OT replicating Horn et al (2011). As the main purpose of the block without a PM intention was to reduce error variance in terms of a priori differences in response speed, however, we did not counterbalance the order of blocks.…”

“…Last, the non-decisional component captures time spent for processing unrelated to the decision such as perception of the target stimulus or execution of the response but also stimulus encoding time (Voss, Voss, & Klauer, 2010). Past applications of the drift diffusion model to PM data with a lexical-decision task as OT have found variations of factual PM task demands to be reflected by changes in the drift rate (i.e., the parameter v) and sometimes in the non-decisional (t0) component ( Boywitt andHorn et al, 2011). This implies that these parameters represent the (dis)engagement in additional resource-demanding PM processing (e.g., monitoring of a different quality, cf.…”

“…Next, the three core parameters of the model as well as their inter-trial variability parameters were estimated. As these core parameters have been shown to reflect different attentional processes of PM ( Boywitt andHorn et al, 2011) we computed separate one-way ANOVAs with the between-subjects variable prediction condition (PMprediction, PM/OT-prediction, No-prediction control) for all three parameters (see Table 1). The ANOVAs did not yield significance for the non-decisional t0 parameter, F < 1, or the processing parameter v, F(2, 135) = 2.31, p = .103, .…”

A diffusion model analysis of task interference effects in prospective memory

“…As a potential solution, researchers have often turned to the analysis of ongoing-task performance to draw inferences about the processes involved in PM-task performance (e.g., Hicks et al, 2005;Marsh, Hicks, & Cook, 2006b;Marsh et al, 2003). Following this rationale, Horn, Bayen, and Smith (2011) first suggested applying the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978) to the data of ongoing-task performance in order to draw more elaborate inferences about the processes involved in PM task performance. While RTs and ongoingtask accuracy have traditionally been analyzed separately, thereby making use of only a subset of the available data, the diffusion model simultaneously considers the whole RT distribution, as well as accuracy data.…”

“…In the first application of the diffusion model to reanalyze data from a standard event-based PM task, Horn et al (2011) showed that the addition of a nonfocal and nonsalient PM task, as compared with a condition without a PM task, reduced the efficiency of information uptake (parameter v). Furthermore, participants in the condition with a PM task adopted a more conservative response criterion (parameter a) in the ongoing task, as compared with participants who did not hold an intention.…”