OPPORTUNISTIC PLANNING - BEING REMINDED OF PENDING GOALS

Pending goals are intentions that are postponed by a planner because t hey do not fit into the current, ongoing activity. Recognizing later o pportunities to achieve pending goals is an important cognitive abilit y because it allows one to defer work on a goal until one is in a bett er position to achieve it. This research focuses on when and how pendi ng goals are recognized in everyday planning situations and offers a p redictive encoding model of goal representation. Experiment 1 provides evidence that pending goals are stored as long-term memory elements t hat become associated, at the time of encoding, with features of the e nvironment representing opportunities to achieve the goals, consistent with the predictive encoding model. Experiment 2 shows that these pre dictive inferences tend to be concrete (e.g., ''use Vaseline to remove a stuck ring''), rather than more abstract (e.g., ''use any lubricant ''), which is nonoptimal for recognizing novel opportunities. However, as shown in Experiment 3, instructions to encode a potential plan wit h only abstract constraints can lead to recognition of a wider range o f opportunities. These findings provide evidence for the predictive en coding model and suggest ways to facilitate the later recognition of o pportunities for satisfying pending goals. (C) 1997 Academic Press.