WHEN FORGETTING TO REMEMBER HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCE OF CONTEXT ON PROSPECTIVE MEMORY FAILURE RATES
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1
Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Australia
Aims: Prospective memory is the ability to remember future intentions as planned, such as remembering to take prescribed medication. From a human factors standpoint, failures of prospective memory are an important cause of human error. These failures can have undesirable consequences, particularly within complex systems, such as those in aviation and healthcare. One underexplored factor is how environments that differ in terms of the potential consequences of prospective memory failure (such as a hospital compared to a resort) affect performance. The aim of this study was to explore if and how these environments foster or disrupt the execution of intentions within a simulated real-world context.
Method: Thirty-six participants, naïve to the purpose of the study, completed a simulation task mimicking three-days in a Hospital or Resort environment. This included plan formation, retention, and execution of intentions comparable across conditions. A 13-item questionnaire was then completed to assess self-reported prospective memory in relaxed and high-pressure environments.
Results: A mixed ANOVA revealed no main or interaction effects of environment on prospective memory. However, for the Hospital, but not the Resort condition, we found moderate to strong, negative correlations between self-reported forgetting in a typical week and both time- and event-based memory accuracy within the task. For the Resort condition only, there was a strong, positive correlation between time and event-based tasks. Participants in the Resort condition rated remembering intentions for others as more important than intentions for themselves. Participants in the Hospital condition reported they typically remember time-based intentions better than event-based intentions. Overall, participants self-reported more forgetting in pressured situations compared to relaxed situations.
Conclusion: While there appears to be no overall difference due to the environmental context, results suggest that prospective memory ability affects performance in the simulated Hospital but not the Resort environment. This could be due to the salience of the consequences of failure in a hospital environment leading to greater pressure and decreased performance for those with relatively worse prospective memory.
Keywords:
Intention,
human factors,
prospective memory,
virtual environments,
Working conditions,
Sociotechnical systems
Conference:
Southern Cross University 14th Annual Honours Psychology Research Conference, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, 5 Oct - 6 Oct, 2017.
Presentation Type:
Research
Topic:
Psychology
Citation:
Stemp
JD and
Longstaff
MG
(2017). WHEN FORGETTING TO REMEMBER HAS SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INFLUENCE OF CONTEXT ON PROSPECTIVE MEMORY FAILURE RATES.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
Southern Cross University 14th Annual Honours Psychology Research Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2017.72.00013
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Received:
25 Sep 2017;
Published Online:
11 Dec 2017.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Mitchell G Longstaff, Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450, Australia, mitchell.longstaff@scu.edu.au