Abstract
The intention-superiority effect refers to the superior retention of information about intended but uncompleted tasks compared with the retention of information about tasks that are unintended. We conduct two experiments to examine this effect in a situation where the participants were presented with multiple plans. The first experiment attempts to replicate the effect with 24 participants. The results indicated that the time needed for a lexical decision tended to be shorter for items included within a script when the script was yet to be performed compared to when the script had already been carried out. In the second experiment, 24 participants performed actions from two scripts that were memorized in advance. Longer response times were observed for items from the second script, when the decision task was administered before performing the first script compared to when the decision task was administered after performing the first script (i.e., immediately before performing the second script). These results indicate that participants efficiently control activation levels related to both uncompleted and completed plans.
