Project Director

Shelton, Jill T.

Department Examiner

O'Leary, Brian J.

Department

Dept. of Psychology

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Prospective memory encompasses the ability to remember to carry out future intentions. Prospective memory performance is essential for students. College students are expected to remember and complete a variety of assignments on a daily basis. In these naturalistic experiments taking place before and after COVID-19, college students were required to set academic goals for themselves for three consecutive days following specific guidelines. Each day, the participant identified a time specific academic goal and a non-time specific academic goal. Participants were randomizing assigned experimental or control condition. The experimental group performed an episodic future thinking exercise during encoding. Additionally, each time students submitted a goal, they also identified how they remembered to complete the goal, either with internal or external reminders. Results showed no significant correlation between episodic future thinking and academic goal performance. However, in both experiments a significant correlation was observed between external reminder use and academic goal completion. Moreover, participants in both experiments completed more non-time specific tasks than time-specific tasks and reported use of both external reminders and internal reminders. Thus, these experiments are suitable for providing evidence for the benefits of cognitive offloading for academic success. They also open a discussion for the effect of modality change on academic goal performance.

Acknowledgments

C.A.L.M. Lab; UTC URaCE

IRB Number

19-139

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

12-2020

Subject

College students; Prospective memory

Keyword

Prospective Memory; Episodic future thinking; Reminders; COVID-19

Discipline

Experimental Analysis of Behavior

Document Type

Theses

Extent

42 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Date Available

12-1-2020

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