Failure Of Environmental Cues To Activate Memory Is Associated With Forgetting Regular Behaviour

The intention gets lost in the shuffle when contextual cues fail to prompt one’s remembrance of that intention at the appropriate time, according to research.

When conducting experiments to better understand a certain lapse in memory for important but routine behaviours like turning off the oven when one leaves the house for the day, the researchers at the University of Notre Dame in the US came across these findings.

Researchers term this prospective memory.

Additionally, the researchers in this study discovered that anyone could experience potential memory errors.

“You process those (cues) more automatically, so you can get lost in your thoughts because your behaviours are being driven by the environment. It’s not that you forget what it is you’re supposed to be doing; you’re just forgetting to do it at the appropriate moment,” said Nathan Rose, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology at the university.

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition has published the findings.

In this study,

In order to determine whether and how college students could forget their cellphones—something to which they are typically extremely attached and which, if forgotten, could have serious consequences for them—Rose and colleagues designed experiments.

When 192 Notre Dame students took part in an unrelated experiment, the researchers took their cellphones. They then looked at how frequently the students forgot to grab their phone when they left the lab at the conclusion of the experiment and whether it made a difference if they were explicitly reminded to do so.

For the study,

Additionally, activity trackers were distributed to the students to be fastened to their waistbands. While the other group was not, one group received a reminder to request their mobile and hand it back when finished.

The students were debriefed and directed to the exit after completing the unrelated experiment, and the experimenters pretended to carry on as usual while keeping an eye on them to see if and when they remembered to get their phones or give back the trackers.

Without the reminder, about 7% of students forgot their cellphones as opposed to almost 5% of those who received it. In both categories, almost 18% of people forgot to turn in the tracker.

The study was performed in the context of 496 children in the US having died of pediatric vehicular heatstroke since 1998, because their caregiver forgot they were in their car. The data quoted by the study is from NoHeatStroke.org.

The researchers in this study theorised that the same way the students missed the environmental cues to remind them to pick up their phone or return the tracker, so it is for parents who are driving to work or running errands with a baby in the backseat.

“The absence of salient visual and auditory cues from a child who is sleeping in the backseat creates a scenario conducive to forgetting the child is in the car,” the researchers wrote.

Rose also explained that memory errors occur at the same frequency between men and women.

“When you talk about the forgotten baby scenarios, people often make assumptions about who forgets their babies, who the caregivers are,” said Rose.

“And there’s no evidence to support the idea that men are more likely to commit this kind of error than women, or vice versa,” said Rose.

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