Strategic monitoring in prospective memory: Use of contextual cues or a bias to monitor more in words?

Abstract

Strategic monitoring is the heightening of monitoring in relevant contexts where prospective memory (PM) targets are expected and the relaxation of monitoring in irrelevant contexts. There is ample evidence for strategic monitoring, but most studies instructed participants about relevant contexts (e.g., PM targets will appear in words but not in nonwords). In Experiments 1 and 2, we examined whether strategic monitoring emerges without such instructions when participants must learn that words are the PM-relevant context. Participants monitored more in words than in nonwords, demonstrating experience-guided strategic monitoring. However, this pattern emerged even before the first PM target, suggesting a word-monitoring bias. In Experiment 3, the PM-relevant context was shifted to nonwords so that evidence for experience-guided strategic monitoring could not be attributed to a word-monitoring bias. Participants monitored equally in words and nonwords. Collectively, Experiments 1-3 revealed no clear evidence of experience-guided strategic monitoring independent of a word-monitoring bias. Experiment 4 was identical to Experiment 3 except that participants were directly instructed that PM targets would occur in nonwords. There was only short-lived evidence of instructed strategic monitoring. Our findings cast doubt on the possibility that strategic monitoring can arise through experience (i.e., via the learning of associations between contextual cues and PM relevance), suggesting that strategic monitoring may require instructions. Additionally, we found a previously undocumented word-monitoring bias. Understanding this bias is important for instructed and experience-guided paradigms, as it can mimic strategic monitoring when words are the relevant context or obscure evidence of strategic monitoring when nonwords are the relevant context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).