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Mean number of memories retrieved during the first minute in prospective and retrospective memory conditions, for females and males.
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Individual differences in the relative accessibility of everyday memories were investigated. Based on the theory of action control described by Kuhl and colleagues (Kuhl and Beckmann, 1994b), an intention-superiority effect (heightened activation and accessibility of intentions--i.e., prospective memories--compared to retrospective memories) was pr...
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Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to perform a future action at a specified later time, which is investigated through the use of event-based and time-based tasks. Prior investigations have found that PM is impaired following traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, there is limited information regarding the cognitive functions that m...
Although cognitive deficits are common in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF), no study to date has investigated whether these deficits extend to the capacity to execute delayed intentions (prospective memory, PM). This is a surprising omission given the critical role PM plays in correctly implementing many important CHF self-care behaviors....
For nearly 50 years, psychologists have studied prospective memory, or the ability to execute delayed intentions. Yet, there remains a gap in understanding as to whether initial encoding of the intention must be elaborative and strategic, or whether some components of successful encoding can occur in a perfunctory, transient manner. In eight studie...
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... State-oriented people's enhanced cognitive maintenance of intentions has been conceptually replicated in studies using naturalistic, personally relevant intentions. For instance, Penningroth (2005) asked 67 American undergraduates to list intentions they enacted over the last year (retrospective memories) versus intentions they were still going to enact in the upcoming year (prospective memories). State-oriented participants retrieved significantly more prospective memories than retrospective memories, indicating an intention superiority effect. ...
People differ in how readily they enact their intentions. Some people manage to enact very difficult intentions -like writing a book or starting a business- under demanding circumstances -like extreme stress or oppressive bureaucracy. Other people struggle to enact even mundane intentions -like replying to an email or taking out the trash. These individual differences in intention enactment have been the central focus of action-theoretical research. Section 1 of this chapter traces the historical development of the action-theoretical perspective, from prescientific notions to Action Control Theory (ACT; Kuhl, 1984). Section 2 presents an update of ACT in the form of ACTψ (‘act-psi’). According to ACTψ, efficient action control requires the person to use affect regulation to coordinate the interplay of intention memory and intuitive behavior control. Chronic individual differences in affect regulation presumably underlie the personality disposition of action versus state orientation. Section 3 considers the measurement of action versus state orientation. Section 4 reviews research showing that, as compared with state-oriented people, action-oriented people: 1) Enact demanding and self-directed intentions more efficiently in real life and controlled settings; 2) Form, maintain, and update their intentions more readily; 3) Regulate own affective states more rapidly, are better shielded against stress and mental illness, and display more personal growth. Finally, section 5 considers how the action-theoretical perspective complements social-psychological approaches to intention-behavior relations.
... For example, there are no validated scales for recording mental labor, which means only single facets of mental labor are measured (e.g., household management, perform them more frequently than men (Ahn et al., 2017;Harrington & Reese-Melancon, 2022;Moulton-Tetlock et al., 2019). Thus, such gender differences seem to be motivational rather than ability-related (e.g., Hultsch et al., 1987;Penningroth, 2005). Therefore, to further explain gender differences in mental labor, additional aspects of our conceptual definition pertaining to the social dimension of mental labor need to be considered. ...
With this literature review, we provide a systematic overview on and working definition of mental labor in the context of unpaid work—an inherent cognitive component of daily routines primarily related to domestic or childcare tasks. Our methodology followed PRISMA guidelines, and 31 full-text articles were included. Articles were peer-reviewed and published in social science, sociological, and psychological journals. The studies applied quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches including, interviews, online surveys, observations of family routines, time estimates, and experiments. The samples covered a wide age range, consisting mostly of U.S. American or European middle-class women and men (married or in a relationship). Predominantly, the articles show that women perform the larger proportion of mental labor, especially when it comes to childcare and parenting decisions. Further, women experience more related negative consequences, such as stress, lower life and relationship satisfaction, and negative impact on their careers. We offer an integrative theoretical perspective to explain the gendered distribution of mental labor and cognitive load. We consider theoretical and practical implications of these findings for reducing gender inequality in mental labor in the context of unpaid work within the household and childcare.
... State-oriented people's enhanced cognitive maintenance of intentions has been conceptually replicated in studies using naturalistic, personally relevant intentions. For instance, Penningroth (2005) asked 67 American undergraduates to list intentions they enacted over the last year (retrospective memories) versus intentions they were still going to enact in the upcoming year (prospective memories). State-oriented participants retrieved significantly more prospective memories than retrospective memories, indicating an intention superiority effect. ...
... Moulton-Tetlock at al. found this gender difference by using a procedure that is commonly used to measure the accessibility of PM tasks during the retention interval (see Freeman and Ellis 2003;Szarras and Niedźwieńska 2011). The same gender difference in the accessibility of PM tasks was found by Penningroth (2005) who measured the intention-superiority effect (intentions being more accessible in memory than retrospective/episodic elements) and found this effect only in women. Importantly, a study by Freeman and Ellis (2003) shows that there is a positive relationship between the ability to access individual intentions during the retention period and the proportion of intentions completed. ...
... It has been suggested that these expectations increase women's effort not only to keep others' intentions in mind but also to effectively manage their own PM tasks (Moulton-Tetlock et al. 2019). Therefore, women may, for example, rehearse their PM tasks during the retention interval more often than men do, which could make these tasks more accessible in memory and more likely to eventually be carried out (Freeman and Ellis 2003;Kvavilashvili and Fisher 2007;Penningroth 2005;Szarras and Niedźwieńska 2011;Tan and Kvavilashvili 2003). ...
Prospective memory, which is the ability to remember to do something in the future, is strongly linked to gender stereotypes. Women are expected to play a mnemonic role in romantic heterosexual couples and be successful in prospective memory tasks. Our purpose was to test whether stereotypical expectations manifest in gender differences in remembering to perform intended actions. Furthermore, we investigated whether these differences manifest only when participants are in a relationship with an other-gender partner which puts women under higher social pressure to be effective in prospective remembering. Forty Polish women (20 in relationship, 20 out of relationship) and 40 Polish men (18 in relationship, 22 out of relationship) were asked to send a SMS text to the experimenter every day for 7 consecutive days. As predicted, a female advantage in performance was found only for participants who were in a relationship, with no gender differences among those who were not. Of particular interest was that women who were in a relationship performed better compared to women without partners. In contrast, men performed worse if they were in a relationship compared to when they did not have a partner. Implications are discussed for how gender inequalities in prospective remembering can be tackled by educators in secondary schools and psychologists who conduct premarital workshops, as well as how they can be used by couple psychotherapists to deal with crises related to the division of labor in a couple.
... The table for listing the five tasks contained five numbered slots, with the heading: EXAM-PLES of things you want to remember to do. These instructions were adapted from those we had used in a past study [62], which were adapted from instructions used by Maylor, Chater, and Brown [63]. However, in the current study we also added the instruction to exclude habits or activities that you would do automatically like sleeping, having dinner, or brushing your teeth, which we adapted from a study by Freeman and Ellis [64]. ...
... We decided on having participants list five prospective memory tasks based on past published research from our lab and others [27,62,65] and from pilot testing of the key measures, which showed that listing 12 tasks and relating them to goals and concerns was too onerous for participants, resulting in high rates of non-completion. However, limiting the list to five tasks probably means these tasks are relatively high in importance when compared to all tasks a person intends to do. ...
Prospective memory tasks are tasks that one must remember to perform in the future, such as keeping a dentist appointment or locking the door when leaving home. There has been little research to date on the question of what motivates real-life prospective memory tasks, and this is true both generally and within the subfield of aging and prospective memory. In the current study, we investigated whether the prospective memory tasks of younger and older adults were motivated by different personal goals and concerns, a question that has not been addressed in past research. Participants completed a questionnaire on current prospective memory tasks and the higher level goals and concerns that motivated these tasks. In general, younger and older adults reported prospective memory tasks motivated by different goals and concerns that reflected different social age systems or developmental tasks. Specifically, younger adults were more likely to report prospective memory tasks related to goals for education, profession, property, self, and leisure, and related to concerns about education and profession. In contrast, older adults were more likely to report prospective memory tasks related to concerns about world issues and war/terrorism. We also examined prospective memory task motivation more generally as approach motivation (goal-relatedness) and avoidance motivation (concern-relatedness). Both measures showed a gender by age group interaction. That is, older males showed especially low approach motivation and especially high avoidance motivation for their real-life prospective memory tasks. We suggest that a new approach to prospective memory research that incorporates motivational influences would enhance the ecological validity of prospective memory and aging research and may inform more effective memory interventions.
... Además, el hecho de que en este paradigma el contenido del guion prospectivo fuese solo de cinco acciones, pudo haber impedido la monitorización activa que se suele apreciar en tareas demoradas con mayor nivel de exigencia, donde el sujeto debe mantener el contenido del material intencional en el foco de atención a la par que lleva a Steffens, 2017) en la medida en que los diferentes resultados se han obtenido manipulando diferentes tipos de variables (Penningroth, 2005;2011). Así, la distinción entre latencia y precisión que se pretende poner de relieve en el presente trabajo puede no sólo enriquecer la aportación experimental presentada en este marco teórico, sino también la comprensión de cómo el contenido asociado a una acción intencional queda patente en tareas a las que el ser humano se enfrenta diariamente; esto es, el reconocimiento y el recuerdo libre. ...
... Por consiguiente, se propone que la definición de efecto de superioridad de la intención se interprete con cierta cautela, de cara al presente hallazgo. A pesar de que algunos estudios contradicen la intención como variable explicativa de la varianza (Freeman y Ellis, 2003;Eichenbaum et al., 2007;Penningroth, 2005;Schult y Steffens, 2011;, es recomendable seguir empleando este constructo con el fin de facilitar la comunicación entre los profesionales que trabajan sobre esta temática. Sin embargo, habría que hacer una reformulación de la definición propuesta, poniendo de relieve que no se limita a los menores tiempos de reacción en función de la accesibilidad, sino que asigna un fenómeno experimental de la memoria prospectiva, en el que llevar a cabo una acción futura tiene efectos muy variados sobre la latencia y precisión de las tareas cognitivas empleadas. ...
Introducción: En el ámbito de la memoria retrospectiva se acepta la existencia de una memoria explícita y una implícita. El presente trabajo analiza la posible existencia de esos mismos niveles en la memoria prospectiva.
Métodos: El Experimento 1 (n = 78, de los que n = 39 en el grupo experimental y n = 39 en el grupo control) plantea una tarea clásica de memoria prospectiva, con una tarea de reconocimiento posterior tras la que los participantes deben realizar una tarea intencional, así como una tarea de recuerdo libre incidental. El Experimento 2 (n = 74, de los que n = 37 en el grupo experimental y n = 37 en el grupo control) investiga el efecto de priming de repetición durante una tarea de decisión léxica tras la que los participantes deben llevar a cabo una conducta futura.
Resultados: Los resultados del Experimento 1 mostraron una monitorización activa de la tarea intencional acompañado de un proceso de búsqueda recolectiva durante el intervalo de retención. Además, el grupo que debía ejecutar la tarea prospectiva tuvo mejores puntuaciones en la tarea de recuerdo libre incidental. El Experimento 2 mostró una monitorización activa de la tarea intencional acompañado de priming de repetición durante la demora de la conducta futura.
Conclusión: Se propone por ello que la memoria explícita e implícita no solo existe en un contexto retrospectivo, sino también prospectivo. Se discuten las implicaciones de la concepción de la memoria como un continuo y no como entidades discretas.
... The effect Personality and Age in Prospective Retrieval 23 is much stronger for state-oriented persons (Goschke & Kuhl, 2003, pp. 1221-1223, especially under high load conditions (Penningroth, 2005). ...
A rather new topic in memory research over the last 25 years was memory for intentions (prospective memory; PM). A large number of naturalistic and laboratory studies asked the question of whether PM declines with age. It was initally postulated that this was not the case, thus reflecting a specific and remarkable exception to various aspects of retrospective memory (RM). The question of the absence of age impairments in PM therefore seemed of theoretical but also of huge practical interest. The latter refers to rapidly ageing western societies and the importance to preserve the ability of carrying out intentions to prolong independent living at old age. Astonishingly, the question of PM impairments in old age is still unsettled and this is even the case if PM is studied not only as a monolithic concept but also when several of its subdomains are assessed separately. In this chapter, we argue that this is due to methodological shortcomings and the consequence of a severe neglect of inter-individual and noncognitive factors influencing PM. Prospective state orientation is one of these noncognitive factors which proved powerful as it strongly interacts with healthy ageing and task demands. There may not exist a simple ´yes-or-no´ answer to the grand-prix question of age decline in PM but state-oriented individuals do show considerable problems in intention enactment under high demands and a lack of positive affect. This is shown by two of our own studies which used a modified PM design in order to overcome methodological problems of classical PM measures.
... Goals also influence behaviour more covertly, by affecting more automatic processes such as attention and memory. For instance, stimuli related to active goals show a heightened accessibility in our minds (refer to work on the intentions superiority effect; Penningroth, 2005;Goschke & Kuhl, 1993) and are better remembered (refer to work on the Zeigarnik effect; Zeigarnik, 1939), compared with motivationally neutral stimuli. Goals also influence how we interpret stimuli. ...
We propose a novel cognitive framework to distinguish between statements of true and false intent based on research on goal-directed behaviour. A true intention comes with a commitment to carry out the stated intention. This commitment activates the behavioural goal of a true intention. In contrast, a false intention does not come with a commitment to carry out the stated intention. Hence, the behavioural goal of a stated false intention should be inactive. Active goals have profound and predictable influences on human behaviour. For instance, active goals influence planning, future thought and evaluations. Such influences are functional—they aid in goal attainment. Insofar as true intentions activate goals, but false intentions do not, the expected influences of active goals should be weaker or non-existent for those stating a false intention. The framework parsimoniously accounts for previous intention-focused deception studies while generating new directions for future research.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Although we have not definitively ruled this possibility out in the current investigation, it is important to note that there is no compelling evidence that women outperform men on prospective memory tasks. Some researchers have observed superior prospective remembering by women (e.g., Huppert et al. 2000;Maylor et al. 2002;Penningroth 2005), whereas others have report finding no gender differences in prospective remembering whatsoever (e.g., Bakker et al. 2002;Crawford et al. 2003;Efklides et al. 2002). It is worth noting that there is evidence that the gender difference observed in some of the studies may be rooted in motivation rather than capacity. ...
... For instance, in testing for gender differences in self-reported memory failures, Hultsch et al. (1987) reported finding no gender differences in self-reported capacity (e.g., BI am good at remembering^) but that females utilize mnemonic strategies more than males (e.g., "I write appointments in a calendar to help me remember them") and experience greater anxiety about remembering (e.g., "I do not get flustered when put on the spot remember new things" ). Likewise, Penningroth (2005) presented evidence that is consistent with the idea that females engage in more frequent conscious rehearsal of outstanding intentions than males (see also Tan and Kvavilashvili 2003). In sum, it seems unlikely that women offer disproportionate mnemonic assistance simply because they are endowed with brains that make them particularly suited to specialize in this role. ...
Couples appear to help each other remember outstanding tasks (“to-dos”) by issuing reminders. We examine if women and men differ in the frequency with which they offer this form of mnemonic assistance. Five studies measure how heterosexual couples coordinate mnemonic work in romantic relationships. The first two studies demonstrate that men are assumed to do less of this form of mnemonic work (Study 1) and experience less societal pressure to do so than women do (Study 2). The next three studies suggest that men tend to do less of this mnemonic work than women do and that, when men do mnemonically help their partners, the help tends to involve errands for which they are stakeholders. This notion was evidenced in the greater accessibility of examples of women’s reminding acts than men’s reminding acts for both partners (Study 3) and in the less helpful reminders that men provided, compared to those women provided, as rated by both partners (Study 4a) and independent coders (Study 4b). These results converge on the possibility that men, relative to women, are less inclined to be concerned with keeping track of their partners” outstanding needs, perhaps because doing so is a behavior that is less strongly prescribed for men than for women. Implications for helping behavior and the possible consequences associated with performing disproportionate mnemonic work in relationships are discussed.
... Because of the differences between paradigms, however, findings cannot be compared directly. As one example, for female, but not male participants, Penningroth (2003) found an intention-superiority effect in the most accessible memories. ...
The intention-superiority effect denotes faster response latencies to stimuli linked with a prospective memory task compared to stimuli linked with no prospective task or with a cancelled task. It is generally assumed that the increased accessibility of intention-related materials contributes to successful execution of prospective memory tasks at an appropriate opportunity. In two experiments we investigated the relationship between the intention-superiority effect and actual prospective memory performance under relatively realistic conditions. We also manipulated enactment versus observation encoding to further investigate the similarity in representations of enacted and to-be-enacted tasks. Additionally, Experiment 1 included a control condition to investigate the development of the intention-superiority effect over time. Participants were asked to perform prospective tasks at the end of the experiment in order to prepare the room for the next participant. They studied these preparatory tasks at the beginning of the experiment either by enacting them themselves or by observing the experimenter perform them. In Experiment 2, participants in a control condition did not intend to perform prospective tasks. We observed a smaller intention-superiority effect after enactment encoding than after observation encoding, but only if response latencies were assessed immediately before the prospective memory task. In addition, Experiment 2 suggested that the size of the intention-superiority effect is related to successful prospective memory performance, thus providing evidence for a functional relationship between accessibility and memory.
