Forgetting during interruptions: the role of goal similarity

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 both the interrupting and the interrupted task are related. Participants performed a sequence task with operations denoted by letters. This task was occasionally interrupted by a secondary task, also involving letter processing. The hypotheses were that resumption of the primary 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. There were fewer errors at resumption when the letters processed or the operations performed used letters processed immediately before the interruption compared to 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.