Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2021, Vol. ›› Issue (3): 545-551.

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Effects of cognitive load and encoding modes on prospective memory and its two components

You-zhen CHEN1, 2,Jin-Hui HU3   

  1. 1.
    2. Nanjing Normal University
    3. Fujian Normal University
  • Received:2019-10-10 Revised:2020-09-29 Online:2021-05-20 Published:2021-05-20
  • Contact: Jin-Hui HU

认知负荷与编码方式对前瞻记忆及其成分的影响

陈幼贞*1,辛聪2,胡锦慧1   

  1. 1. 福建师范大学心理学院
    2. 南京师范大学心理学院
  • 通讯作者: 胡锦慧

Abstract: Prospective memory is an ability to successfully perform an intention, referring to the memory of a planned event in a specific situation or at a specific time in the future. Prospective memory can be divided into event-based prospective memory and time-based prospective memory. Event-based prospective memory includes prospective component and retrospective component. Prospective component is the observation and recognition of target clues, and retrospective component is the extraction of future intention. Previous studies have shown that cognitive load, encoding modes would affect the prospective memory performance of the participants. However, there are still different views about whether different encoding modes have influence on prospective memory. The influence of different encoding modes on prospective memory under different cognitive load has not been determined. Therefore, this study explores the effects of cognitive load and encoding modes with simple intention content on the prospective memory and its components through two experiments. In experiment 1, we adapted 2 (cognitive load: high, low) × 3 (encoding modes: standard encoding, implementation intentions encoding, writing encoding) mixed design. During the experiment, the participants were supposed to complete two tasks at the same time. The ongoing tasks were divided into 1-back task and 2-back task, which correspond to low and high cognitive load. The encoding mode of prospective memory tasks were divided into standard encoding, implementation intentions encoding and writing encoding. Experiment 1 results showed that under low cognitive load, prospective memory performance was better than that of high cognitive load conditions. Under the implementation intentions encoding and writing encoding, the correct rate of prospective memory were significantly higher than that of standard encoding, and there was no significant difference between the implementation intentions encoding and writing encoding. In experiment 2, we adapted 2 (cognitive load: high, low) × 3 (encoding modes: standard encoding, implementation intentions encoding, writing encoding) mixed design. At the same time, on the basis of experiment 1, we used the experimental separation method to separating the two components and tried to probe how the cognitive load and encoding mode affect the prospective component and retrospective component performance of the participants. The results of experiment 2 showed that under low cognitive load conditions, the performance of prospective components were better than that of the high cognitive load conditions. The correct rate of the prospective components under implementation intentions encoding and writing encoding was significantly higher than that of the standard encoding. And there was no significant difference between the former two encoding modes. Different cognitive load and encoding modes had no significant effect on the retrospective components. The results show that in the case of simple intention content, low cognitive load makes for the successful execution of prospective memory because of the higher successful rate of prospective components. What’s more, implementation intentions encoding and writing encoding can promote the prospective memory performance by promoting the extraction of prospective components.

Key words: prospective memory, cognitive load, encoding modes, prospective component, retrospective component

摘要: 实验1探究认知负荷(高、低)与编码方式(标准、书写、执行意向)对前瞻记忆的影响,实验2进一步探究其对前瞻记忆两种成分的影响。实验1显示执行意向与书写编码的正确率高于标准编码,而前二者无差异;低负荷的前瞻记忆表现好于高负荷。实验2显示执行意向与书写编码的前瞻成分正确率高于标准编码,而前二者无差异;低负荷的前瞻成分表现好于高负荷;不同认知负荷与编码方式均对回溯成分无影响。结果表明:在意向内容相对简单的情况下,执行意向与书写编码对前瞻记忆的促进作用主要表现在促进前瞻成分的提取,低负荷比高负荷有利于前瞻记忆的成功执行,主要体现在前瞻成分成功率更高。

关键词: 前瞻记忆, 认知负荷, 编码方式, 前瞻成分, 回溯成分