Do executive functions explain older adults' health-related quality of life beyond event-based prospective memory?

Looking for cues over time: A study on self-initiated monitoring in event-based and time-based prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to perform an intended action in the future. In everyday life, people often have contextual information (e.g., the presence of cues) to support the completion of their PM tasks. The present study aimed to investigate how context (as probability of PM cue occurrence over time) and predictability affect PM. In two experiments, participants performed a laboratory PM task having the possibility to check the probability of the next PM cue occurrence whenever they wished; PM cue probability was manipulated to be temporally informative (predictable) or uninformative (unpredictable) on the actual PM cue occurrence. Both experiments showed that PM accuracy and cost on ongoing task performance increased with the presence of contextual information. Experiment 2 showed that this effect was independent of cue focality for PM accuracy but not for PM cost, for which the effect of context was particularly strong for non-focal compared to focal cues. Participants monitored the PM cue with uniform frequency over time, regardless of the context's predictability, and checked the probability of PM cue occurrence more often when the cue was non-focal compared to focal. This study showed the importance of contextual information in PM, highlighting the capacity of people to adapt the allocation of attentional resources systematically over time to optimize strategic monitoring and, in turn, PM performance.

Time-Based and Event-Based Prospective Memory in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to perform planned actions in a future moment and it is of fundamental importance for an independent and autonomous lifestyle from development to late adulthood. Deficits in episodic memory and executive functions, which are involved in PM are characteristic features of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Considering that the number of older adults is drastically increasing over the next decades, it is of great interest to understand how PM decline in healthy older adults and patients with different degree of cognitive decline. The present meta-analysis included 46 studies investigating PM performance in AD patients (17 studies) and people with MCI (24 studies); 5 studies included both clinical conditions in the same article. The 46 studies contributed a total of 63 independent samples and 129 effect sizes from 4668 participants (2115 patients and 2553 controls). Unlike previous reviews of the literature, our results with a larger and updated sample of studies confirmed lower PM abilities in AD compared to MCI and controls, although we did not observe conclusive differences between event-based and time-based PM in patients. Surprisingly, PM deficits shown by MCI and AD patients have decreased across years, in parallel to a reduction of the evidence of publication bias and an increase in the number of observations per task. We propose the use of more reliable research designs as one plausible explanation for the reduction of PM impairments.

The mediating role of impulsivity in the relationship between executive functions (working memory, inhibition) and prospective memory

ABSTRACTProspective memory refers to the ability to remember and execute planned tasks. This ability is associated with certain cognitive processes and personality traits. This study investigated the mediating role of impulsivity facets in the relationship between executive functions and prospective memory. Urmia University students (n = 201) participated in this cross-sectional study conducted from October to December 2023. Cluster sampling was employed for recruitment. Data were collected using the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), Adult Executive Functioning Inventory (ADEXI), and Short UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale (S-UPPS-P). Correlational analyses and path analysis were conducted. The path analysis revealed that among impulsivity facets, just lack of perseverance partially mediates the relationship between working memory and prospective memory (β = .062, p < .05), but not between inhibition and prospective memory (β = .010). These findings suggest that working memory deficits contribute to prospective memory failures, with lack of perseverance acting as a single mediator. This highlights the importance of considering both lack of perseverance and working memory for a comprehensive understanding of prospective memory difficulties.

Assessing time-based prospective memory online: A comparison study between laboratory-based and web-based testing

Prospective memory (PM, i.e., the ability to remember and perform future intentions) is assessed mainly within laboratory settings; however, in the last two decades, several studies have started testing PM online. Most part of those studies focused on event-based PM (EBPM), and only a few assessed time-based PM (TBPM), possibly because time keeping is difficult to control or standardise without experimental control. Thus, it is still unclear whether time monitoring patterns in online studies replicate typical patterns obtained in laboratory tasks. In this study, we therefore aimed to investigate whether the behavioural outcome measures obtained from the traditional TBPM paradigm in the laboratory-accuracy and time monitoring-are comparable with an online version in a sample of 101 younger adults. Results showed no significant difference in TBPM performance in the laboratory versus online setting, as well as no difference in time monitoring. However, we found that participants were somewhat faster and more accurate at the ongoing task during the laboratory assessment, but those differences were not related to holding an intention in mind. The findings suggest that, although participants seemed generally more distracted when tested remotely, online assessment yielded similar results in key temporal characteristics and behavioural performance as for the laboratory assessment. The results are discussed in terms of possible conceptual and methodological implications for online testing.

Contextual variation in cognitive performance of older adults: Demonstration of an age-of-examiner effect

Objective: Consistent with research on stereotype threat, when examiners' characteristics make a stereotype of the participant group salient, it can hamper participants' performance. We hypothesized that younger examiners represent a subtle element activating age stereotypes, leading older people to perform worse as examiners' age decreases. Method: We analyzed data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE; NParticipants = 32768) and Vivre-Leben-Vivere studies (VLV, Nparticipants = 960), wherein older people were tested at home by examiners of different ages on eight cognitive tasks. Results: Our results indicate that participants' performance on five tasks was positively linked to examiners' age, showing that the older the examiner, the better the participants' performance. Conclusions: These findings could have implications for the current assessment of memory performance among older adults.

The Geneva Space Cruiser: a fully self-administered online tool to assess prospective memory across the adult lifespan

The current study aimed to examine whether the Geneva Space Cruiser - a new online adaptation of the Cruiser - represents a valid, reliable and useful tool to assess prospective memory (PM) across the adult lifespan via fully self-administered online testing. Therefore, an adult lifespan sample of 252 adults (19-86 years old) performed the Geneva Space Cruiser in the laboratory and online, at home, and also performed a more traditional laboratory PM task. A second sample of 224 young adults (19-35 years old) participated in a test-retest online assessment of the Geneva Space Cruiser. Bayesian analyses showed that the Geneva Space Cruiser yielded similar results when administered in the laboratory versus online, both in terms of data distribution as well as of key outcome measures (i.e., PM performance and monitoring). Results further showed very good test-retest reliability and acceptable construct validity. Finally, the online tool was sensitive for detecting age-differences similar to those typically observed in laboratory studies. Together, our findings suggest that the Geneva Space Cruiser represents a rather valid, moderately to highly reliable, and generally useful tool to assess PM in online testing across wide ranges of the adult lifespan, with certain limitations for the oldest participants and for women.