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Focality In Prospective Memory: A Thorough Examination Of Cue Specificity And Task-Appropriateness, Bethany Alice Lyon

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Prospective memory (PM) refers to memory for future intentions (e.g. remembering to press a button when you see an animal word). Researchers classify PM intentions in the laboratory as focal or nonfocal primarily in two ways. One way, task-appropriateness, refers to how the processing for the intention relates to the processing required for an ongoing task; the PM intention and the ongoing task either match in processing (TAP; focal) or mismatch in processing (TIP; nonfocal). The second way researchers classify focality is based on cue specificity, with the PM task either being specific (focal) or general (nonfocal). Resolving this ambiguity …