Controlling Intentions: The Surprising Ease of Stopping After Going Relative to Stopping After Never Having Gone

• Autores: Julie M. Bugg, Michael K. Scullin
• Localización: Psychological Science, ISSN-e 1467-9280, Vol. 24, Nº. 12, 2013, págs. 2463-2471
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Decades of cognitive-control research have highlighted the difficulty of controlling a prepotent response. We examined whether having prepotent prospective-memory intentions similarly heightens the difficulty associated with stopping an intention once a prospective-memory task is finished. In three experiments, participants encoded a prospective-memory intention (e.g., press Q in response to the targets corn and dancer) and subsequently encountered either four targets or zero targets. Instructions then indicated that the prospective-memory task was finished. In a follow-up task, the targets appeared, and commission errors were recorded. Surprisingly, it was easier for participants to stop the intention when it had been fulfilled (four-target condition) than when it had gone unfulfilled (zero-target condition; Experiments 1 and 2). This was true even after intention cancellation (Experiment 2). Although repeatedly performing an intention strengthens target-action links, it appears to enable deactivation of the intention, a process that is largely target specific (Experiment 3). We relate these findings to the Zeigarnik effect, target-action deactivation, and reconsolidation theories.