Discussion
time-based
The goal of this study was to explore the causal role of MW on PM. To do this, we compared the effect of two MW inductions (High and Low MW frequency), during the PM retention phase, on PM performances taking into account cue types and both PM components. Our main findings were two-fold. First, a high MW frequency during the PM retention phase, compared to a low one, was linked with a global better retrieval of PM intentions. Secondly, spontaneous past-oriented MW content predicted better retrieval of the retrospective component of Pre-EBL-PM intentions, while spontaneous EFT-oriented MW content predicted better performance of the prospective component of Pre-EBL-PM intentions. Moreover, the retrospective component of the Post-EBL-PM intentions EBL cues were significantly and positively predicted by voluntary EFT-oriented MW episodes. We will discuss the potential twofold functional role of MW, namely, to consolidate an already programmed intention and to anticipate the future, and more precisely PM intentions retrieval context.Noteworthy, our results highlighted the consistency of the methods used in this study. Firstly, our results on the different aspects of PM showing that time-based PM was less well recovered, compared to event-based PM, especially those semantically linked, are coherent with previous findingsRegarding our main hypothesis, our results concerning the comparison between High versus Low MW induction substantiate that the condition leading to more frequent MW episodes during a PM retention phase allows a global better recall of prospective actions. An alternative interpretation would be that in the Hard condition, the task difficulty produced retroactive interference, leading to diminished PM performances. Although we cannot completely rule out this hypothesis, recent studies have highlighted that post-encoding demanding tasks (2-back and 3-back) similar to our Hard condition do not interfere with memory consolidation when compared to waking restRegarding our mitigated results about prospective bias, although we reported a predominant quantity of planning-oriented thoughts, called in the literature prospective bias, the latter did not predict PM performances, as we also reported in our recent experience-sampling studyThe two MW induction groups also differed in general on PM performances of cues encoded after the MW induction (during the VR navigation). So, there is probably more to it than the effect on the consolidation phase. This could be due to a carry-over effect, inasmuch as those who do more EFT-MW during the retention phase, also do it during navigation, and if one voluntarily does EFT during navigation when one encounters a new cue, it means that one is probably trying to memorize it by imagining the context of execution. Of course, this is speculative, but it could be tested in a study in which we measure MW just after the presentation of a PM intention to be encoded (thus studying the impact of MW on PM encoding). This would be consistent with the effect of For the effect of voluntary EFT-MW on EBL-PM intentions encoded during the VR PM task, it could be argued that deliberate imagination of the virtual immersion and visuospatial context in which Post PM intention completion will later take place may have been easier for the realization of Post PM intention, by enhancing the encoding and retrieval of the new intended actionAccording to Cole and Kvavilashvili