Initial planning benefits complex prospective memory at a cost

ABSTRACT

The effect of initial planning on complex prospective memory was investigated using a virtual environment and a sample of healthy young adults (N = 34). Participants were assigned to either an initial planning or a control condition and were asked to complete a series of time- and event-based prospective memory tasks. The planning group completed the tasks more quickly and accurately than the control group. However, the total time spent, including both planning and task execution, was comparable for the two groups. Within the planning group, tasks that were planned were more likely to be completed than unplanned tasks, but inclusion of overly detailed information in the plans resulted in poorer performance. These results suggest that although initial planning can be beneficial to task completion, the complexity of a plan may contribute to decrements in performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Planning
• Prospective memory
• Virtual environment

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Jordan Grafman for discussions about initial research design, to Gary Schafer for technical support, to Ed Schaefer and Chris Siuzdak for assistance collecting and scoring data, and to Erin Fritsch and Bobbi Adams-Isaac for assistance coding data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Jill R. Settle http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0693-6910

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a faculty grant-in-aid from The Catholic University of America.