Abstract/Summary

Resuming an interrupted task requires remembering the goals that governed behaviour immediately before the interruption. Here we examined whether forgetting of goals can be mitigated when goals of the interrupting task are related to the existing goals of the interrupted task. Participants performed a sequence task in which consecutively performed operations were denoted by letters. The sequence task was occasionally interrupted by a secondary task, with operations also involving processing of letters. The tested hypotheses were that resumption of the primary sequence task would be facilitated if, within the interrupting task, either the letters processed (Experiment 1) or the operations denoted by these letters (Experiment 2) matched the goals immediately preceding the interruption. Both experiments found fewer errors at resumption when either the letters processed, or the operations performed, used letters processed immediately before the interruption when compared to a control condition involving a random letter from the sequence task. These results indicate that forgetting of goals is moderated by the similarity of the goals pursued across interrupting and interrupted tasks, although the effect does not seem to be modulated by maintenance of the specific goal which preceded an interruption.