Acting is Key to Remembering Tasks

The technique used was encoded enactment, where subjects were encouraged to act through the activity they must remember to do.

Prospective Memory: Remembering to Remember, Remembering to Forget (Anna-Lisa Cohen and Jason Hicks, 2017)

“Similar to descriptions of reality monitoring errors, omission errors in prospective memory may occur because the subjective feeling accompanying an intention to do something in the future is misattributed as being the actual event.

If the encoding of the intention was particularly vivid, then this vividness may later be mistakenly judged as perceptual details accompanying the actual event. 

There are various factors that may contribute to the degree of vividness of an intention. 

For example, Thomas and Bulevich (2006) demonstrated that repeatedly imagining a future action makes it more likely that it will be falsely attributed to actual performance (known as the imagination inflation effect). (…)

Implementation intentions take the format of “If Situation X is encountered, then I will perform Behaviour Y!” and they are to be distinguished from simple goal intentions.

Goal intentions have the structure of “I intend to reach Z!” and Z represents a certain outcome or behavior to which the individual feels committed.

In an implementation intention, a link is purposefully created between a specific anticipated future situation and the goal-directed response.

Forming an implementation intention obligates the individual to perform a desired goal-directed behavior once the critical situation is encountered. (…)

Prospective Memory: Remembering to Remember, Remembering to Forget (Anna-Lisa Cohen and Jason Hicks, 2017)

“Prospective memory involves an intention to perform a future action being established in memory.

Then later, some aspect of the environment eventually triggers remembering to fulfill the intention.

Prospective memory is also referred to as “remembering to remember” or “remembering to recall”.

More than a century ago, Baldwin (1897) defined intentional action as “the emergence of desire, deliberation, and effort:

the conscious representation of a goal, the active consideration of alternative means and ends, and the feeling accompanying the selection and execution of a plan”. (…)

Perhaps Ellis and Kvavilashvili (2000) offered the most comprehensive definition of prospective memory:

“Successful prospective remembering enables us to shape and direct our cognitive resources in the pursuit of future actions and plans.

As such, it is a critical element in the coordination and control of cognitive skills that underlie our ability to complete many real-world activities.

It should, therefore, no longer be regarded as an aspect of memory that lies on the fringes of cognitive psychology but as one that is central to developing our understanding of how intentions are translated into action”.

"Did you ever forget something you meant to buy at the store?"

Today on Trinity College Week: Sarah Raskin, professor of psychology and neuroscience, discusses how different disorders affect memory and which treatments can be effective.

Some quotes from wired's article "We Need Technology to Help Us Remember the Future."

"But there’s one big area where our digital recall falls short: prospective memory. Today’s tech helps mostly with retrospective or semantic memory, events or facts we’ve encountered in the past. Prospective memory is different. It’s our ability to remember to remember something—like stopping to grab the dry cleaning on the way home. As it turns out, this is where our pain really lies. "

[...] "Prospective memory is about getting things done."