Document Type
Article
Publication Date
January 1997
Journal or Book Title
Cognitive Psychology
Volume
34
Abstract
Investigated when and how pending goals are recognized in everyday planning situations and offered a predictive encoding model of goal representation. Ss in all 3 experiments were undergraduate students and were provided with a situation, various goals and varying amounts of suggestions on how to achieve the goals. Exp 1 provides evidence that pending goals are stored as long-term memory elements that become associated, at the time of encoding, with features of the environment representing opportunities to achieve the goals, consistent with the predictive encoding model. Exp 2 shows that these predictive inferences tend to be concrete, rather than more abstract, which is nonoptimal for recognizing novel opportunities. However, as shown in Exp 3, instructions to encode a potential plan with only abstract constraints can lead to recognition of a wider range of opportunities. These findings provide evidence for the predictive encoding model and suggest ways to facilitate the later recognition of opportunities for satisfying pending goals.
Recommended Citation
Patalano, A. L., & Seifert, C. M. (1997). Opportunistic planning: Being reminded of pending goals. Cognitive Psychology, 34, 1-36.