The recall of completed and noncompleted tasks through daily logs to measure procrastination

For five consecutive days, participants listed daily tasks they intended to complete. Recall of listed tasks served as the primary dependent variable. Characteristics of the task, including whether or not the task was actuall y completed, did not, in general, predict recall. The one exception was tha t the rated importance of the task to one's family did increase the likelih ood of recall. Individual differences in avoidant procrastination were nega tively related to the likelihood of recalling listed tasks. Avoidant procra stination also was related (positively) to false positive rates, the degree to which individuals "recalled" tasks that they had not listed the previou s day. These findings suggest that procrastinators may have general cogniti ve processing strategies that are different from non-procrastinators. Howev er, further research is needed to explore the information processing abilit ies of people who delay completing tasks.