Intention Interference, Intention Superiority and Commission Errors in Prospective Memory Tasks after Suspended or Finished Instructions

Most prospective memory experiments focus on response times and overall task performance. Utilizing MouseTracker software (Freeman & Ambady, 2010), the intention interference effect and intention superiority effect are tested by analyzing data of mouse trajectories, velocities, acceleration, and angles. The evidence of the intention interference effect in this experiment further supports the multiprocess theory and the claim that spontaneous retrieval is the primary method of retrieval for suspend or completed prospective memory tasks (Einstein & McDaniel 2000). The primary focus of the current study was to examine the correlation between the intention interference effect in the presence non-salient prospective memory target words and the suspended or finished instructions the participants received. Results indicated 32% of all participants committed commission errors, indicating that there is still more research to be done to completely understand how we dissociate memories based on cue focality, instruction sets, context, and time delay.