Road to Successful Prospective Memory Execution: Comparing Event Based and Time Based Intentions

Time Based (TB) and Event Based (EB) Prospective Memory (PM) tasks differ at very basic level. In EB PM tasks, the target cue is explicitly present in the environment, whereas in TB PM tasks, the target cue is temporal and relies more on self-initiated monitoring. In this study, researchers aimed to empirically find the difference in the performance over a TB and EB PM tasks when other factors like Ongoing Task (OT), PM tasks, target cues and temporal intervals are same. Researchers additionally manipulated the relative importance of PM task by rewarding either PM task performance, OT performance or giving or reward for any task. A total of 128 participants were divided into two groups. All the participants performed four test blocks (two of TB PM task and two of EB PM task) having same OT and PM tasks. The two groups differed in the reward conditions. Group 1 (n=77) was either rewarded for successful OT performance or given no reward. Group 2 (n=51) was either rewarded for successful PM performance or given no reward. Results showed that the performance over EB PM task was consistently better than that on TB PM task irrespective of the reward condition.