Natalee has successfully defended her thesis:
The Effects of Reminder Distinctiveness and Anticipatory Interval on Prospective Memory
Abstract: Prospective memory failures (or failures to remember a future intention) can result in a wide range of negative consequences. The use of reminders has been shown to improve the rate of PM successes. The aim of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of reminders based on their type (text or picture) and their timing. We hypothesized that successful PM performance would be successfully maintained over longer anticipatory intervals when paired with picture reminders rather than with simple text reminders because of the inherent distinctiveness of pictures. We also expected that performance for younger adults would be better than that of older adults except in conditions pairing a long anticipatory interval with a picture reminder. We expected that in these conditions, performance for younger and older adults would be statistically similar. While our hypotheses were not fully confirmed, there were significant effects of reminder type on both form errors and clock checks, such that younger adults had less form errors when presented with picture reminders and both age groups exhibited increased clock checking behavior with the use of such reminders. These findings suggest that arousal and task vigilance are benefited with the use of picture reminders which could have simple, yet powerful design implications for reminder devices.
Committee: Dr. Richard Pak (Chair), Dr. Patrick Rosopa, and Dr. Paul Merritt
When: Monday, October 20th, 2014 at 11am
Where: Brackett 419
