ABSTRACT
Imagine a typical morning. You wake up, look in the mirror, and decide you need to shampoo your hair. You get in the shower, sleepily shampoo your hair, and laugh when you realize you are shampooing it again after having already rinsed. You feed your dog and then finish getting ready for work. As you later walk by the now empty dog food bowl, you retrieve the intention to feed your dog. You remember that the intention is no longer relevant, and therefore, you do not perform it again. Just before leaving home, you walk into the bathroom one last time. You notice your medication bottle. The intention to take your medicine pops into mind and you fulfill the intention. Shortly thereafter you wonder if you had already taken your medication this morning. As this brief example illustrates, our daily lives are full of prospective memory (PM) intentions—actions we intend to perform in response to a target at the appropriate moment in the future. Though we rarely give it any thought, our cognitive system is constantly challenged to keep track of those intentions so that we do what we intend to do, and we do not do what we have already done.
