Abstract: The mechanism of prospective memory (PM) is a hot topic in memory research area, among which the transfer appropriate processing (TAP) effect of PM has received much attention. Researchers have studied the influence of several individual variables, especially age, on TAP effect of PM. In the present study, we investigated whether there was difference in TAP effect of PM among individuals with different cognitive styles when attention was either focused or divided.
This study included two experiments using the classical PM paradigm. Experiment 1: (1) Participants: one hundred and forty-six undergraduates participated in the Group Embedded Figure Test (GEFT). Among them, top 30 high-score student were dubbed field-independent (FI), and 30 lowest-score students were dubbed field-dependent (FD). The final sample included 26 FI and 28 FD. (2) Experimental design: PM task was perceptual. The design was 2 (cognitive styles: FD or FI) × 2 (attention: focused or divided) × 2 (relationship between PM task and ongoing task: matched or mismatched) mixed factorial design. Experiment 2: (1) Participants: one hundred and fifty undergraduates participated in the GEFT. The method used was the same as that of experiment 1.The final sample included 28 FI and 30 FD. (2) Experimental design was the same as that of experiment 1except that PM task was semantic. We used SPSS10.0 to analyze the data.
The results were as follows: Experiment 1: Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) on PM scores showed the main effect of attention state was significant (p<0.01). PM score under the focused attention were significantly higher than that of divided attention. The interaction between cognitive style and relationship between PM task and ongoing task was significant (p<0.01). When PM task mismatched ongoing tasks, PM score of FI subjects was significantly higher than that of FD subjects. Further analysis on the difference scores between matched condition and mismatched condition of PM task and ongoing task processing types showed significant main effect of cognitive style (p<0.05). PM score of FD subjects were significantly higher than that of FI subjects, which meant TAP effect of PM was strengthened on FD subjects.
Experiment 2: MANOVA test on PM scores showed that as experiment 1, the interaction between cognitive style and relationship between PM task and ongoing task was significant. The interaction between attention and relationship between PM task and ongoing task was also significant (p<0.01). Divided attention tasks showed a significantly impairing effect on PM score when the PM tasks mismatched ongoing tasks. Further analysis on the difference scores between matched condition and mismatched condition of PM task and ongoing task processing types again showed main effect of cognitive style (p<0.01). PM score under divided attention was significantly higher than that under focused attention (p<0.01), which indicated that TAP effect of PM was strengthened under divided attention.
To sum up, the current study demonstrated that when PM tasks mismatched ongoing tasks, PM score of the FI subjects were significantly higher than the FD subjects; when the two tasks matched, however, PM scores of FI and FD subjects were comparable. For both semantic and perceptual processing in PM tasks, the TAP effect was found in both FI and FD subjects. Moreover, it is more salient for the FD. Divided attention tasks showed a significantly impairing effect on PM score in the perceptual PM tasks. But only when PM tasks mismatched with ongoing tasks, divided attention tasks showed a significantly harmful effect in semantic PM tasks with a more significant TAP effect.

Key words: TAP effect, cognitive style, attention state