Investigating the role of cognitive load on prospective memory performance across event and mixed cues retrievals

Abstract

Abstract Prospective memory (PM) is remembering to perform a delayed action in the future. A number of reminders can initiate prospective memories (future events and actions). At any given time, people plan to execute several tasks in the future, the success of which depends on the successful retrieval of reminders for actions. Such scenarios justify the use of multiple reminders as this would increase the chance of success in future task completion. The present study explores one such possibility where two reminders in conjugation (mixed) signal future task execution. To know the effectiveness of multiple reminders on future task performance we tested scenarios with simple and complex task paradigms. We hypothesize multiple reminders guarantee higher success rates for future task completion however, this benefit would decrease with increase in complexity of future task. The result of our study suggests that multiple reminder improve chances of success for both simple and complex task future tasks with simple tasks showing higher improvement complex tasks.