@article{ref1,
title="Controlling intentions: The surprising ease of stopping after going relative to stopping after never having gone",
journal="Psychological science",
year="2013",
author="Bugg, Julie M. and Scullin, Michael K.",
volume="24",
number="12",
pages="2463-2471",
abstract="Decades of cognitive-control research have highlighted the difficulty of controlling a prepotent response. We examined whether having prepotent prospective-memory intentions similarly heightens the difficulty associated with stopping an intention once a prospective-memory task is finished. In three experiments, participants encoded a prospective-memory intention (e.g., press Q in response to the targets corn and dancer) and subsequently encountered either four targets or zero targets. Instructions then indicated that the prospective-memory task was finished. In a follow-up task, the targets appeared, and commission errors were recorded. Surprisingly, it was easier for participants to stop the intention when it had been fulfilled (four-target condition) than when it had gone unfulfilled (zero-target condition; Experiments 1 and 2). This was true even after intention cancellation (Experiment 2). Although repeatedly performing an intention strengthens target-action links, it appears to enable deactivation of the intention, a process that is largely target specific (Experiment 3). We relate these findings to the Zeigarnik effect, target-action deactivation, and reconsolidation theories.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0956-7976",
doi="10.1177/0956797613494850",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797613494850"
}