The ecological validity of prospective memory experimentation

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember and fulfill future intentions, a crucial ability in everyday life. Discrepancies between performance in standard laboratory tasks versus naturalistic tasks has led to translational concerns to everyday life. Validity concerns surrounding laboratory PM tasks have been raised due to the lack of relationship between PM performance and measures of strategic monitoring, which is believed to be how much attention participants dedicate to the PM task. The present study (N=82) compares an eye tracking task, a standard laboratory task, and a naturalistic task. The findings support previous research indicating that performance in laboratory PM tasks is not a good predictor of performance in everyday life. Notably, both the eye tracking and standard laboratory tasks demonstrate a correlation between strategic monitoring and PM accuracy. Finally, participants were better at predicting their PM performance on each laboratory task but were overconfident in the naturalistic task.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Pusser, Anna

Contributors dc:contributor

• Shelton, Jill Talley
• Madden, Julie; Clark, Amanda
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Prospective memory
• Metacognition
• Planning--Ability testing

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/830

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-2004