Abstract
This study primarily intended to reveal prospective memory (PM) mechanisms by focusing on inhibitory functions. Recently, Utsumi & Saito (in press) showed that inhibitory control based on remembering certain information impaired PM remembering when there was little overlap between the processing for the ongoing and PM tasks. However, that inhibition did not impair spontaneous PM remembering when PM cues were focal to the ongoing task. In the current study, we hypothesized that other inhibitory mechanisms, particularly the inhibition of motor responses, would impair the spontaneous event-based PM remembering. To test this, we manipulated the type of PM cues by using a go/no-go manipulation. This manipulation suppressed the detection of no-go stimuli when focal cues were presented during the PM task, but not when nonfocal cues were presented. These results suggested that inhibitory mechanisms differ depending on the cue focality in PM tasks.
