RETRIEVAL CUE SPECIFICITY AND THE REALIZATION OF DELAYED INTENTIONS

Successful performance of a delayed intention relies, in part, on reco gnition that a cue provides a signal for the retrieval and realization of that intention. The relative case with which Lues are recognized s hould influence the likelihood of successfully acting upon a delayed i ntention (cf. Einstein & McDaniel, 1990). We report three studies in w hich we manipulated ease of recognition by providing, at encoding, eit her the particular cues (category exemplars) that subsequently appeare d during the test phase or the name of the category from which these c ues were drawn-specific or general encoding instructions, respectively . Recognition of cues at test, and thus delayed intention performance, should be enhanced by the provision of specific rather than general i nstructions at encoding-the ''specificity effect'' identified by Einst ein, McDaniel, Richardson, Guynn, and Cunfer (1995). This contrast, ho wever, is likely to be influenced by both category-exemplar and exempl ar-exemplar relations. The experiments reported here explored the infl uence of these relations on delayed intention performance. The results indicate the importance of the semantic relations (a) among cues and (b) between cues and the category from which they are drawn in determi ning the superiority of specific over general cue instructions.