ZORA robot to assist a caregiver in prospective memory tasks: A preliminary study

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the interest of an assistance robot to help caregivers manage the activities of daily living of institutionalized elderly people with Alzheimer's disease. Twenty-three institutionalized persons (60% women; average age 89; average MMSE score of 20.8) with Alzheimer Disease (AD) were recruited and invited to participate in prospective memory exercise sessions, conducted either by a caregiver or by a robot (assisted by a caregiver). They were divided into two groups equivalent in age, level of education and MMSE score. In addition, the sessions were recorded in order to compare the interaction behaviors of the 2 groups, using a validated observation grid. The results showed that: 1) prospective memory tasks are better performed when offered by the caregiver; 2) when strong help linked to the recovery index is provided to perform the tasks, the robot or caregiver no longer show significant differences; 3) participants interact more with the caregiver than with the robot. Our results confirm that the use of companion robots is a promising way to help caregivers manage the daily activities of people with Alzheimer's. However, to optimize this assistance, further investigations should be conducted to improve the fluidity of interactions between the patient and the robot.

The role of cue salience in prospective memory commission errors in nonperformed nonfocal tasks

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to execute an intention in the future without having a permanent reminder. These intentions can be performed when they are not relevant or become no-longer needed, the so-called "commission errors". The present study aims to understand the effect of cue salience on PM commission errors with unperformed intentions and on the ongoing task performance-associated costs. Through a between-subjects design, eighty-one participants were assigned to 3 conditions: the no-PM condition, which served as control, and the salient and nonsalient conditions, which were asked to perform a lexical decision task and an incomplete nonfocal prospective memory task (i.e. no PM cues were presented). Subsequently, participants were instructed to no longer execute the prospective intention. In the second phase, a lexical decision task occurred again, including irrelevant PM cues, which should not be answered as such. In the salient condition, cues were salient (i.e. presented in red or blue background). In contrast, in the nonsalient condition, PM cues appeared on a black background, as any other stimuli. In the no-PM control condition, participants only performed an LDT. A commission error occurred when the (irrelevant) intention was performed in this second phase. Results showed that more participants performed a commission error in the presence of salient cues, even when PM intentions became irrelevant. Additionally, when cues were not salient, participants took longer to answer the LDT, as reasoned by the spontaneous retrieval theory. These findings are discussed according to the dual-mechanism account.

Isolating the effects of visual imagery on prospective memory

Two experiments investigated the role of visual imagery in prospective memory (PM). In experiment 1, 140 participants completed a general knowledge quiz which included a PM task of writing a letter "X" next to any questions that referred to space. Participants either visualised themselves performing this task, verbalised an implementation intention about the task, did both, or did neither. Performance on the PM task was enhanced in both conditions involving visual imagery but not by implementation intentions alone. In experiment 2, 120 participants imagined themselves writing a letter "X" next to questions about space, or in a bizarre imagery condition imagined themselves drawing an alien next to those questions. Relative to the control condition, PM was significantly enhanced when participants imagined writing a letter "X" next to the target questions, but not by the bizarre imagery task. The findings indicate that the robust effects of imagery observed in retrospective memory also extend to PM.

Spontaneous memory strategies in a videogame simulating everyday memory tasks

People can use different internal strategies to manage their daily tasks, but systematic research on these strategies and their significance for actual performance is still quite sparse. Here we examined self-reported internal strategy use with a 10-block version of the videogame EPELI (Executive Performance in Everyday LIving) in a group of 202 neurotypical adults of 18-50 years of age. In the game, participants perform lists of everyday tasks from memory while navigating in a virtual apartment. Open-ended strategy reports were collected after each EPELI task block, and for comparison also after an EPELI Instruction Recall task and a Word List Learning task assessing episodic memory. On average, 45% of the participants reported using some strategy in EPELI, the most common types being grouping (e.g., performing the tasks room by room), utilising a familiar action schema, and condensing information (e.g., memorising only keywords). Our pre-registered hypothesis on the beneficial effect of self-initiated strategy use gained support, as strategy users showed better performance on EPELI as compared with no strategy users. One of the strategies, grouping, was identified as a clearly effective strategy type. Block-by-block transitions suggested gradual stabilisation of strategy use over the 10 EPELI blocks. The proneness to use strategies showed a weak but reliable association between EPELI and Word List Learning. Overall, the present results highlight the importance of internal strategy use for understanding individual differences in memory performance, as well as the potential benefit for internal strategy employment when faced with everyday memory tasks.

Naturalistic assessments in virtual reality and in real life help resolve the age-prospective memory paradox

 Cognitive aging researchers have long reported "paradoxical" age differences in prospective memory (PM), with age deficits in laboratory settings and age benefits (or no deficits) in real-world settings. We propose a theoretical account that explains this "age-PM-paradox" as a consequence of both methodological factors and developmental changes in cognitive abilities and personality traits. To test this account, young  and older  adults   performed a series of naturalistic PM tasks in the lab and real world. Age-related PM deficits were observed in both lab-based tasks where demands were implemented using virtual reality and in-person role-playing. In contrast, older adults performed equal to or better than young adults on both real-world tasks, where demands were implemented in participants' daily lives. Consistent with our proposed account, an index of these "paradoxical" effects was partially predicted by age-related differences in working memory, vigilance, agreeableness, and neuroticism, whose predictive utility varied across task settings.

The effect of ostracism on prospective memory in problem solving

Successfully generating plans, while seemingly straightforward, can be riddled with external and internal interferences. One important possible source of interference is ostracism, which has been consistently shown to induce negative psychological effects in various executive functions. Therefore, understanding the impact of unforeseen ostracism on planning is vital to a broad spectrum of the population, from university students, whose self-esteem partly derives from social acceptance, to healthcare professionals, whose performance oftentimes relies on peer feedback. An individual's ability to navigate through intended actions is an evaluation of their prospective memory (PM), which is traditionally divided into three consecutive phases: (1) planning, (2) recall, and (3) performance. This study primarily focused on the impacts of ostracism via Cyberball simulation on the first two phases of PM in the Tower of London (TOL), an assessment of executive functioning designed specifically to test planning ability during problem solving. Using Bayesian analysis, the study found substantial evidence of there being no difference in planning success between social exclusion and inclusion conditions. However, an individual's sex had significant effects on their planning success at baseline (i.e., inclusion condition). Surprisingly, there was no difference in performance between male participants and female participants when excluded, suggesting that ostracism may play an equalizing role. In addition, male participants both listed more moves at planning and recalled more moves, which led to no difference between sexes in terms of recall percentage. This study underscores a need to consider various factors such as sex and differing perceptions of ostracism when analyzing and addressing problem solving performance.

Sensory modality affects the spatiotemporal dynamics of alpha and theta oscillations associated with prospective memory

BACKGROUND

The maintenance of an intention in memory (Prospective Memory, PM) while performing a task is associated with a cost in terms of both performance (longer response times and lower accuracy) and neurophysiological modulations, which extent depends on several features of the stimuli.

AIM

This study explores the neural patterns associated with PM in different sensory modalities, to identify differences depending on this variable and discuss their functional meaning.

METHOD

Data were collected using a High-Density EEG during a baseline and a PM condition, proposed in a visual and an auditory version. Theta and alpha oscillations were compared between the two conditions within each modality using a cluster-based permutation approach.

RESULTS

PM conditions were associated with clusters of decreased alpha and theta activity in both modalities. However, different spatiotemporal dynamics were elicited as a function of sensory modality: alpha decreases displayed an overlapping onset between modalities, but different durations, lasting longer in the auditory modality. Conversely, the clusters of decreased theta activity presented similar durations between modalities, but different temporal and spatial onsets, appearing at different moments over the respective sensory areas.

CONCLUSIONS

The similar spatiotemporal properties of alpha suppression between modalities indicate that such oscillations may represent a supramodal, top-down process, presumably reflecting the external direction of attention to successfully detect the prospective cue (strategic monitoring). In theta, the clusters showed more modality-specific differences, which temporal and spatial properties correspond to the ones necessary to perform the ongoing task, suggesting a shift in resource allocation in favor of the PM task.

"Do not take that medication": negative prospective memory in Korsakoff's syndrome

BACKGROUND

While prospective memory (i.e., the ability to execute a future plan) has been extensively researched, little is known about negative prospective memory (i.e., the ability to remember not to execute a future plan) in Korsakoff's syndrome (KS). We thus evaluated both prospective memory and negative prospective memory in KS, as well as the relationship between both types of prospective memory and inhibition.

METHODS

Patients with KS and control participants were invited to press a button on the keyboard (i.e., prospective memory) or not to press a button when a cue word (e.g., negative prospective memory) was encountered.

RESULTS

The analysis demonstrated that patients with KS had more prospective memory errors (i.e., forgetting to click the keyboard when the instruction was to do so) than control participants. The analysis also demonstrated that patients with KS had more negative prospective memory errors (i.e., clicking the keyboard when the instruction was not to do so) than control participants. Similar levels of commissions and omissions were observed in patients with KS than in control participants. Interestingly, prospective and negative prospective performances were significantly correlated with performance on an inhibition assessment task.

DISCUSSION

Our study demonstrates that KS is characterized by not only difficulty in remembering to execute a future intention but also by difficulty in remembering not to execute a future intention. A decline in negative prospective memory in KS can be associated with difficulty in inhibiting no longer appropriate previously learned intentions.

The role of offloading intentions on future-oriented thinking

Offloading (e.g., using Google calendar reminders) has been shown to improve prospective memory (PM). One unstudied aspect of PM offloading is whether having reminders reduces our future-oriented thinking about PM intentions in contexts in which the intention cannot be fulfilled. In the current study, participants were given two blocks of an ongoing lexical decision task. Prior to beginning the task, participants formed an intention to make a special response to PM targets only in block 2. Participants in the reminder condition had the PM intention displayed at the top of the screen in block 2, whereas those in the no-reminder condition did not. To assess activation of the intention out of context, PM lures (Experiment 1) or thought probes (Experiments 2 and 3) were presented in block 1. Results showed that reminders improved PM performance in block 2 but did not reduce lure interference or PM-related thoughts in block 1. These findings suggest that offloaded memory representations remain as activated and accessible as non-offloaded representations outside the context in which intentions can be fulfilled.

The breadth of animacy in memory: New evidence from prospective memory

Studies using retrospective memory tasks have revealed that animates/living beings are better remembered than are inanimates/nonliving things (the animacy effect). However, considering that memory is foremost future oriented, we hypothesized that the animacy effect would also occur in prospective memory (i.e., memory for future intentions). Using standard prospective memory (PM) procedures, we explored this hypothesis by manipulating the animacy status of the PM targets. Study 1a reports data collected from an American sample; these results were then replicated with a Portuguese sample (Study 1b). Study 2 employed a new procedure, and data were collected from a broader English-speaking sample. In these three studies, animate (vs. inanimate) targets consistently led to a better PM performance, revealing, for the first time, that the animacy advantage extends to PM. These results strengthen the adaptive approach to memory and stress the need to consider animacy as an important variable in memory studies.

Thinking about it: the impact of COVID-19-related stimuli on prospective memory

Background

Since 2020, information regarding COVID-19 has been a constant presence in the news, in our conversations and thoughts. Continuous exposure to this type of stimuli could have an impact on cognitive processes essential for our everyday activities, such as prospective memory (PM). PM is the ability to remember to perform an intention at a specific point in the future, like remembering to take prescribed medicines at a specific time or to turn off the stove after cooking. Do COVID-related stimuli affect our ability to perform a PM task?

Methods

To answer this question, we proposed a novel version of the classical paradigm used to investigate PM. Namely, this paradigm includes a baseline condition, in which an ongoing task is presented alone, and a PM condition in which the same task is proposed again together with a second (prospective) task. In this study, a short video clip was presented between the baseline and the PM condition. The video clip displayed either neutral, negative, or COVID-related content. Additionally, participants were asked to respond to two questionnaires and a series of questions regarding their well-being and experience with the pandemic. Namely, the DASS-21 scale (evaluating depression, anxiety, and stress), and the COVID-19-PTSD questionnaire (a questionnaire evaluating post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms related to the pandemic experience) were administered. Participants' performance and responses were analyzed using a linear mixed effect (LME) model approach, and correlation analyses were run to highlight possible correlations between participants' scores in the DASS-21, the COVID-19-PTSD, and the additional questions on their personal experience with the pandemic.

Results

The LME models revealed significant effects of the displayed video on performance: in line with previous studies, the clip displaying standard negative contents led to impaired accuracy in the ongoing task in the PM condition, compared to the Baseline. In contrast, participants who saw the COVID-related clip showed improved accuracy in the ongoing task compared to the other participants, selectively in the block performed after the video clip was displayed (PM condition). Furthermore, the explanatory power of the LME model calculated on accuracy to the ongoing trials was enhanced by the inclusion of the scores in the anxiety subscale of the DASS-21, suggesting a detrimental role of anxiety. Altogether, these results indicate a different effect of the exposure to classical negative contents (associated with a cost in terms of accuracy in the ongoing task between the baseline and the PM condition) and the pandemic-related one, which was instead characterized by a higher accuracy to ongoing trials compared to the other video clips. This counterintuitive finding seems to suggest that COVID-related stimuli are processed as "acute stressors" rather than negative stimuli, thus inducing a state of increased alertness and responsivity.

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.

Older adults' self-reported prospective memory lapses in everyday life: Connections to inflammation and gender

OBJECTIVE

Limited research has focused on the association between inflammatory markers and features of subjective cognitive functioning among older adults. The present work examined links between inflammation and a specific subjective cognitive report: prospective memory (PM), or our memory for future intentions, such as attending an appointment or taking medication.

METHOD

We assessed self-reported PM lapses using a two-week ecological momentary assessment (EMA) diary protocol via smartphone as well as levels of blood-based inflammation among 231 dementia-free older adults (70-90 years, 66% women) enrolled in the Einstein Aging Study.

RESULTS

Overall, PM lapses were largely unrelated to inflammatory markers. However, a significant gender difference was observed in the link between basal levels of interleukin (IL)-8 and PM lapses: higher levels of basal IL-8 were associated with more PM lapses among men (estimate = 0.98, 95%CI: [0.43, 1.53], p < .001) but not women (estimate = -0.03, 95%CI: [-0.45, 0.39], p = .826). No other significant relationships between PM lapses and basal or stimulated (ex vivo) cytokine levels (IL-1β, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, tumor necrosis factor-alpha [TNF-α]) or C-reactive protein (CRP) emerged.

CONCLUSION

Elevated levels of IL-8 in older men may possibly be an early indicator of neurodegeneration that relates to PM performance. Future studies should continue to examine PM and inflammation across genders to identify possible mechanisms through which these constructs may indicate neurodegeneration and dementia risk.

Strategic monitoring improves prospective memory: A meta-analysis

Monitoring the environment for target events that trigger prospective memory (PM) retrieval requires cognitive resources, reflected by costs to ongoing task performance (i.e., worse accuracy and/or slower response times). Strategic monitoring refers to the use of context to engage or disengage monitoring when a PM target is anticipated or unanticipated. Laboratory strategic monitoring studies have found mixed results as to whether context specification improves PM performance. This study employed a meta-analytic technique to assess the overall effect of context specification on PM performance and ongoing task metrics of strategic monitoring. Overall, context specification improved PM performance when the target was anticipated and improved ongoing task performance (speed and accuracy) when the target was not anticipated. Moderator analyses revealed the degree of slowing in anticipated contexts predicted how much context specification improved PM performance. However, the benefits to PM performance from context specification differed by the type of procedure used. PM performance was improved when context changes could be predicted during blocked or proximity procedures, but not when context varied randomly in trial-level procedures. These results provide insights into the mechanisms underlying strategic monitoring and guidance for researchers on which procedures to be use depending on the theory-driven questions.

The effect of loss incentives on prospective memory in healthy older adults: study protocol of a randomized controlled trial using ultra-high field fMRI

BACKGROUND

Prospective memory is important for our health and independence but declines with age. Hence, interventions to enhance prospective memory, for example by providing an incentive, may promote healthy ageing. The neuroanatomical correlates of prospective memory and the processing of incentive-related prospective memory changes in older adults are not fully understood. In an fMRI study, we will therefore test whether incentives improve prospective memory in older adults and how prospective memory is processed in the brain in general, and when incentives are provided. Since goals and interests change across adulthood, avoiding losses is becoming more important for older adults than achieving gains. We therefore posit that loss-related incentives will enhance prospective memory, which will be subserved by increased prefrontal and midbrain activity.

METHODS

We will include n = 60 healthy older adults (60-75 years of age) in a randomized, single-blind, and parallel-group study. We will acquire 7T fMRI data in an incentive group and a control group (n = 30 each, stratified by education, age, and sex). Before and after fMRI, all participants will complete questionnaires and cognitive tests to assess possible confounders (e.g., income, personality traits, sensitivity to reward or punishment).

DISCUSSION

The results of this study will clarify whether loss-related incentives can enhance prospective memory and how any enhancement is processed in the brain. In addition, we will determine how prospective memory is processed in the brain in general. The results of our study will be an important step towards a better understanding of how prospective memory changes when we get older and for developing interventions to counteract cognitive decline.

Envisioning the future: An ALE meta-analysis on neural correlates of future thinking, prospective memory and delay discounting

Our representations of the future are processed in the service of several different cognitive functions, including episodic future thinking, prospective memory, and temporal discounting. The present meta-analysis used the Activation Likelihood Estimation method to understand whether there is a core network underlying future-oriented cognition and to identify the specific brain regions that support future-related processes in each function. Following the PRISMA guidelines, a total of 24, 19, and 27 neuroimaging studies were included for future thinking, prospective memory, and temporal discounting, respectively. Results showed that there is no specific region or network for the future. Instead, the 'future' seems to be represented on an anterior-posterior tangibility gradient, based on the level of abstractness/concreteness of the simulated scenario. Additionally, future-oriented cognition is mediated by two distinct networks: the Default Network and the Salience Network. The Default Network is mainly active in supporting future thinking, whereas the Salience Network is primarily involved in prospective memory and delay discounting.

Associations between intraindividual reaction time variability and prospective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls

Introduction: Patients with schizophrenia exhibit prospective memory (PM) impairment. Intraindividual reaction time variability (IIRTV) is an index of attentional control that is required for PM. This study examined the differences in IIRTV between patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls and the relationship between IIRTV and PM performance.Method: Thirty-nine patients with schizophrenia and forty-two healthy controls were recruited to complete a PM task and the Sustained Attention to Response Task. IIRTV was calculated as the coefficient of variation (mean/SD) of reaction time over correctly responded trials in these tasks.Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed lower PM accuracy and increased IIRTV, while the associations between PM accuracy and IIRTV were significant in healthy controls but not in patients with schizophrenia.Conclusion: These findings suggest impaired PM and relationship between PM and attentional control in patients with schizophrenia.

Development of the Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory: a virtual reality-based measure of everyday prospective memory abilities

INTRODUCTION

Prospective memory is the ability to remember to accomplish a task at a specified point in the future. While this cognitive ability has a large impact on daily functioning, it is rarely assessed during neuropsychological evaluations. Furthermore, existing clinical prospective memory measures are few in number and have significant limitations, including applicability to everyday functioning and appropriate norming for older adulthood. There are also many gaps in the literature on prospective memory, such as how environmental factors affect performance across the lifespan.

METHOD

In the current study, we develop and establish a new virtual reality-based measure of prospective memory, the Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory. Young adults (ages 18-29; n = 56), healthy older adults (ages 60-90; n = 94), and clinical older adults (ages 62-90; n = 30) were compared on their performances on both the developed virtual reality prospective memory test and a parallel paper-and-pencil prospective memory test to investigate the impact of test environment across participant group.

RESULTS

The Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory was found to adequately differentiate between young adult, healthy older adult, and clinical older adult populations - suggesting baseline ability for prospective memory assessment in clinical settings with older adults and potential for future improvement of neuropsychological evaluations. Additionally, the developed virtual prospective memory task appeared to mimic environmental factors in everyday life but did not replicate the benefit previously measured in healthy older adults' prospective memory ability in naturalistic settings.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the current study built upon extant knowledge of prospective memory in both normal and abnormal aging, suggesting future directions in replicating familiar home environments. Findings provided additional evidence toward future validation of virtual reality assessment tools in clinical neuropsychological evaluations of cognitive abilities, such as prospective memory, with both healthy and clinical older adult populations.

An assessment of learning rates in habitual prospective memory

Most laboratory research in the field of prospective memory has focused on newly formed (episodic) intentions that are carried out in the experimental context once or only a small number of times. However, many naturalistic prospective memories are carried out many times and these types of (habitual) intentions have been studied much less in the laboratory. In the current study, our aim was to extend prior work examining habitual intentions in laboratory prospective memory paradigms. Participants formed a typical prospective memory intention and then completed an ongoing task in which the intention could be executed up to 63 times. We examined changes in performance across trials in three traditionally important prospective memory metrics: cue detection, task interference, and cue interference. Across repeated performance of the prospective memory task, we observed an increase in cue detection, elimination of task interference, and elimination of cue interference. These results provide key insights into the operation of learning mechanisms in prospective memory paradigms and promote theory development by showing that many of the resource-demanding processes that are theorized to be necessary for successful prospective memory play much less of a role when intentions are repeatedly completed.

Prospective memory: the combined impact of cognitive load and task focality

Prospective Memory (PM) entails a set of executive processes primarily associated with the activation of frontal and parietal regions. Both the number of PM-targets to be monitored (i.e. task load) and the relationship between the type of PM-targets and the ongoing (ONG) task (i.e. task focality) can impact executive monitoring and PM performance. In the present imaging study, we manipulated load and focality of an event-based PM task to test the hypothesis that common resources engage in situations requiring high levels of cognitive control: that is, in high-load (i.e. monitor multiple PM-targets) and non-focal conditions (i.e. monitor at the same time letters' identity and color). We investigated monitoring-related and detection-related processes by assessing behavior and brain activity separately for ONG trials (monitoring) and PM-targets (detection). At the behavioral level, we found a significant interaction between load and focality during detection, with slowest reaction times for focal, high-load PM-targets. The imaging analyses of the detection phase revealed the activation of the left intraparietal sulcus in the high-load conditions. Both in the monitoring and the detection phases, we found overlapping effects of non-focality and low-load in the fusiform gyrus. Our results suggest that under low-load conditions, cognitive control operates via early selection mechanisms in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex. By contrast, high-load conditions entail control at later processing stages within the dorsal parietal cortex. We conclude that load and focality operate via different mechanisms, with the level of task load largely determining how cognitive control selects the most relevant information.

The relationship between depressive symptoms, metamemory, and prospective memory in older adults

INTRODUCTION

Depression has been associated with impairments in different cognitive domains in younger adults, including prospective memory (PM; the ability to plan and execute intended actions in the future). However, it is still not well documented nor understood whether depression is also associated with impaired PM in older adults. The current study aimed to examine the association between depressive symptoms and PM in young-old and old-old adults, and to understand the potential influence of underlying factors, such as age, education, and metamemory representations (one's belief about their memory abilities).

METHOD

Data of 394 older adults from the Vivre-Leben-Vivere study were included in the analyses (M_age = 80.10 years, SD = 6.09; range = 70-98 years).

RESULTS

Bayesian ANCOVA revealed a 3-way interaction between depressive symptoms, age, and metamemory representations, indicating that the association between depressive symptoms and PM performance depended on age and metamemory representations. In the lower depressive symptoms group, old-old adults with higher metamemory representations performed as well as young-old adults independently of their metamemory representations. However, in the higher depressive symptoms group, old-old adults with higher metamemory representations performed more poorly than young-old adults with higher metamemory representations.

CONCLUSION

This study indicates that metamemory representations may buffer the negative effect of age on PM performance only in old-old individuals with low depressive symptoms. Importantly, this result provides new insight into the mechanisms underlying the association between depressive symptoms and PM performance in older adults as well as into potential interventions.

A thorough examination of cue specificity and task-appropriateness in defining focal and nonfocal prospective memory tasks

Prospective memory (PM) - memory for future intentions - has a core term called focality which describes how closely a PM task relates to an ongoing task. When a close relationship exists between an ongoing and PM task, the task is classified as focal (loose relationships are classified as nonfocal). Competing PM theories differ primarily in explanations for how focality changes participants' approaches. Researchers classify PM intentions as focal or nonfocal in two ways: (1) task appropriateness, congruency (TAP) or incongruency (TIP) of processing to complete both tasks, and (2) cue specificity, specific or general task cues. Independently manipulating this ambiguity in defining "focality" was our current focus. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group, a focal PM condition, or one of three nonfocal conditions. Their ongoing task involved a semantic judgment (Experiment 1) or an orthographic judgment (Experiment 2). Cue specificity impacted PM accuracy consistently, favouring specific cues. Task-appropriateness impacted PM accuracy in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2 which showed protective effects for specific, whole-word PM cues - emphasizing the role that deeper processing has on PM success. These studies highlight the ambiguity in the operational definition of focality and provide the groundwork for continued refinement of the definition.

I forgot that I forgot: PTSD symptom severity in a general population correlates with everyday diary-recorded prospective memory failures

Extant research suggests a complex relationship between prospective memory (PM) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. In a general population, this relationship exists for self-report assessment but not objective, in-lab PM performance (e.g., pressing a certain key at a particular time, or when particular words appear). However, both these measurement methods have limitations. Objective, in-lab PM tasks might not represent typical everyday performance, while self-report measurement might be biased by metacognitive beliefs. Thus, we used a naturalistic diary paradigm to answer the overarching question: are PTSD symptoms associated with PM failures in everyday life? We found a small positive correlation between diary-recorded PM errors and PTSD symptom severity (r = .21). Time-based tasks (i.e., intentions completed at a particular time, or after a specified time has elapsed; r = .29), but not event-based tasks (i.e., intentions completed in response to an environmental cue; r = .08), correlated with PTSD symptoms. Moreover, although diary-recorded and self-report PM correlated, we did not replicate the finding that metacognitive beliefs underpin the PM-PTSD relationship. These results suggest that metacognitive beliefs might be particularly important for self-report PM only.

Appointment attendance behaviors in multiple sclerosis: Understanding the factors that differ between no shows, short notice cancellations, and attended appointments

BACKGROUND

There has yet to be an examination of how appointment attendance behaviors in multiple sclerosis (MS) are related to scheduling metrics and certain demographic, clinical, and behavioral factors such as cognitive functioning and personality traits. This study aimed to examine the factors that differ between no shows (NS), short notice cancellations (SNC), and attended appointments.

METHODS

Participants (n = 110) were persons with MS who were enrolled in a larger cross-sectional study, during which they completed a battery of neuropsychological measures. Data about their appointments in three MS-related clinics the year prior to their study evaluation were extracted from the medical record. Bivariate analyses were done, with post-hoc tests conducted with Bonferroni corrections if there was an overall group difference.

RESULTS

A higher number of SNC were noted during the winter, with 22.4% being due to the weather. SNC were also more common on Thursdays, but less frequent during the early morning time slots (7am to 9am). In contrast, NS were associated with lower annual income, weaker healthcare provider relationships, lower self-efficacy, higher levels of neuroticism, depressive symptom severity, and health distress, and greater cognitive difficulties, particularly with prospective memory.

CONCLUSIONS

While SNC are related to clinic structure and situational factors like the weather, NS may be more influenced by behavioral issues, such as difficulty remembering an appointment and high levels of distress. These findings highlight potential targets for reducing the number of missed appointments in the clinic, providing opportunities for improved healthcare efficiency and most importantly health.

Altered microstructural pattern of the cortex and basal forebrain cholinergic system in wilson's disease: an automated fiber quantification tractography study

Basal forebrain (BF) cholinergic projection neurons form a highly extensive input to the cortex. Failure of BF cholinergic circuits is responsible for the cognitive impairment associated with Wilson's disease (WD), but whether and how the microstructural changes in fiber projections between the BF and cerebral cortex influence prospective memory (PM) remain poorly understood. We collected diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data from 21 neurological WD individuals and 26 healthy controls (HCs). The experiment reconstructed the probabilistic streamlined tractography of 18 white matter tracts using an automated fiber quantification (AFQ) toolkit. Tract properties (FA, MD, RD, and AD) were computed for 100 points along each tract for each participant, and the differences between the groups were examined. Subsequently, correlation analysis was performed to evaluate whether abnormal microstructural white matter integrity measures correlate with PM performance. Additional investigations used a tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) approach to identify regions with altered white matter structure between groups and verify the reliability of the AFQ results. The highest nonoverlapping DTI-related differences were detected in the anterior thalamic radiation (ATR), corticospinal tract (CST), corpus callosum, association fibers, and limbic system fibers. Additionally, PM parameters of the patient group were highly correlated with white matter microstructure changes in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus. Our study highlights that the performance of projections between cholinergic input and output areas-the cerebral cortex and BF-may serve as neural biomarkers of PM and disease prognosis.

Outsourcing Memory to External Tools: A Review of 'Intention Offloading'

How do we remember delayed intentions? Three decades of research into prospective memory have provided insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in this form of memory. However, we depend on more than just our brains to remember intentions. We also use external props and tools such as calendars and diaries, strategically placed objects, and technologies such as smartphone alerts. This is known as 'intention offloading'. Despite the progress in our understanding of brain-based prospective memory, we know much less about the role of intention offloading in individuals' ability to fulfil delayed intentions. Here, we review recent research into intention offloading, with a particular focus on how individuals decide between storing intentions in internal memory versus external reminders. We also review studies investigating how intention offloading changes across the lifespan and how it relates to underlying brain mechanisms. We conclude that intention offloading is highly effective, experimentally tractable, and guided by metacognitive processes. Individuals have systematic biases in their offloading strategies that are stable over time. Evidence also suggests that individual differences and developmental changes in offloading strategies are driven at least in part by metacognitive processes. Therefore, metacognitive interventions could play an important role in promoting individuals' adaptive use of cognitive tools.

Prospective Memory, Sustained Attention and Response Inhibition in Poly-Substance Users Stable on Methadone Maintenance Treatment

Background: Prospective memory and response inhibition are interrelated constructs, though studied separately in the drug addiction literature. Also, although sustained attention underlies response inhibition, its role in the relation between these functions has been largely neglected. The limited research on the cognitive effects of methadone-maintenance treatment (MMT) further stresses the importance of investigating these effects. Objective: Therefore, the current study focused on possible effects of MMT combined with long-term drug abuse on all these functions. Thirty five long term opiate/poly-substance users in MMT and thirty four drug-free controls were screened for socioeconomic status, anxiety, depression and general, non-verbal intelligence and then tested on a self-report measure of prospective memory and on the Go/No-Go task. Results: Compared to controls, the MMT group scored worse in all functions assessed. Prospective memory scores were also negatively related to Go/NoGo accuracy scores. Conclusion: As predicted, (a) the MMT participants show impairments in prospective memory, sustained attention and response inhibition and (b) prospective memory, response inhibition and sustained attention are related constructs. The results of this study could inform current rehabilitation and relapse prevention cognitive training practices.

Prospective memories in the wild: Predicting memory for intentions in natural environments

Prospective memory, the ability to remember an intention at the appropriate future moment, is often investigated in the laboratory to maximize experimental control. However, demands of laboratory prospective memory tasks only partly map onto everyday demands. Therefore, it is an open question whether factors which predict prospective memory in the laboratory also predict prospective memory in the real world. We combined diary and ecological momentary assessment methods to investigate which factors, that have been repeatedly shown to predict prospective memory performance in laboratory tasks, are related to the fulfillment of everyday intentions. Results showed that substantial portions of variance in real-world prospective memory performance could be explained with the factors found to be significant in laboratory. The most powerful predictors were perceived intention importance, the use of external memory aids, delay interval, and conscientiousness. However, some meaningful laboratory predictors (e.g., working memory) played only a minor role in natural environments and a large portion of the variance in everyday intention fulfillment remained unexplained. The results substantially extend the understanding of conditions and personality variables most conducive to remembering intentions, but they also suggest that additional factors influencing real-world prospective memory remain to be discovered.

External Time Monitoring in Time-Based Prospective Memory: An Integrative Framework

We propose a new integrative framework of external time monitoring in prospective memory (PM) tasks and its relation with performance. Starting from existing empirical regularities and our theoretical analysis, the framework predicts that external monitoring in PM tasks comprises a first stage of loose monitoring to keep track of the passage of time, and a subsequent stage of finer-grained monitoring, based on interval reduction, to meet the PM deadline. Following our framework, we predicted and observed in three different datasets (N = 375): (1) a marked increase in external monitoring frequency in the final part of the period of the PM task, well captured by a proportional rate exponential growth function; (2) a positive association between individual compliance with this monitoring pattern and PM performance; (3) a positive relation between monitoring frequency in the time window immediately preceding the PM deadline and PM performance at the individual level; and (4) good individual compliance with an interval reduction pattern in external monitoring, especially in the time window closer to the PM deadline. These results support the proposed integrative framework, which has the potential to foster future research on external monitoring in PM and in other fields of cognitive science.

Do emotionally salient cues improve prospective memory performance in children and adolescents with autism?

BACKGROUND

Prospective memory (PM) describes the ability to initiate and perform a planned action after a delay. Previous studies suggest reduced PM in autism spectrum disorder (ASD); especially when tasks put high demands on executive control resources. Increasing cue salience by presenting emotional cues improves PM performance in non-autistic populations.

AIMS

To explore whether children with ASD, whose processing of emotionally connoted information might differ from that of typically developing children, may also benefit from this type of salience in PM tasks.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Twenty-five children with and 25 children without ASD completed a 1-back ongoing task into which an event-based PM task was embedded. Emotional salience of PM cues was varied.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Children with ASD performed as well as children without ASD on the PM task and equally benefited from emotionally salient cues. Specifically, negative cues increased PM performance compared to neutral cues in both groups CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The findings are consistent with the multiprocess framework which postulates that salient PM cues increase performance by promoting automatic intention retrieval and reducing executive control demands. Children with ASD seem to show similar comprehension and accessibility to emotional cues as typically developing children.

Prefrontal cortical activation associated with prospective memory while walking around a real-world street environment

Rostral PFC (area 10) activation is common during prospective memory (PM) tasks. But it is not clear what mental processes these activations index. Three candidate explanations from cognitive neuroscience theory are: (i) monitoring of the environment; (ii) spontaneous intention retrieval; (iii) a combination of the two. These explanations make different predictions about the temporal and spatial patterns of activation that would be seen in rostral PFC in naturalistic settings. Accordingly, we plotted functional events in PFC using portable fNIRS while people were carrying out a PM task outside the lab and responding to cues when they were encountered, to decide between these explanations. Nineteen people were asked to walk around a street in London, U.K. and perform various tasks while also remembering to respond to prospective memory (PM) cues when they detected them. The prospective memory cues could be either social (involving greeting a person) or non-social (interacting with a parking meter) in nature. There were also a number of contrast conditions which allowed us to determine activation specifically related to the prospective memory components of the tasks. We found that maintaining both social and non-social intentions was associated with widespread activation within medial and right hemisphere rostral prefrontal cortex (BA 10), in agreement with numerous previous lab-based fMRI studies of prospective memory. In addition, increased activation was found within lateral prefrontal cortex (BA 45 and 46) when people were maintaining a social intention compared to a non-social one. The data were then subjected to a GLM-based method for automatic identification of functional events (AIDE), and the position of the participants at the time of the activation events were located on a map of the physical space. The results showed that the spatial and temporal distribution of these events was not random, but aggregated around areas in which the participants appeared to retrieve their future intentions (i.e., where they saw intentional cues), as well as where they executed them. Functional events were detected most frequently in BA 10 during the PM conditions compared to other regions and tasks. Mobile fNIRS can be used to measure higher cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex in "real world" situations outside the laboratory in freely ambulant individuals. The addition of a "brain-first" approach to the data permits the experimenter to determine not only when haemodynamic changes occur, but also where the participant was when it happened. This can be extremely valuable when trying to link brain and cognition.

Prospective Memory Training in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Prospective memory (PM), which enables one to remember to carry out delayed intentions, is crucial for everyday functioning. PM commonly deteriorates upon cognitive decline in older adults, but several studies have shown that PM in older adults can be improved by training. The current study aimed to summarise this evidence by conducting a qualitative systematic analysis and quantitative meta-analysis of the effects of PM training in older adults, for which systematic searches were conducted across seven databases (Cochrane Library, Embase, PubMed, PsycInfo, Web of Science, CINAHL and Scopus). Forty-eight studies were included in the qualitative analysis, and 43% of the assessed PM training interventions showed positive gains in enhancing PM. However, the methodological quality varied across the studies, with 41% of the non-randomised control trials (non-RCTs) rated as having either serious or critical risk of bias. Therefore, only 29 RCTs were included in the subsequent quantitative meta-analysis. We found a significant and moderate immediate efficacy (Hedges' g = 0.54) of PM training in enhancing PM performance in older adults, but no significant long-term efficacy (Hedges' g = 0.21). Two subgroup analyses also revealed a robust training efficacy across the study population (i.e., healthy and clinical population) and the number of training sessions (i.e., single session and programme-based). Overall, this study provided positive evidence to support PM training in older adults. Further studies are warranted to explore the mechanisms by which PM training exerts its effects, and better-quality RCTs are needed to provide more robust evidence supporting our findings.

Prior experience with target encounter affects attention allocation and prospective memory performance

We examined how prior experience encountering targets affected attention allocation and event-based prospective memory. Participants performed four color match task blocks with a difficult, but specified prospective memory task (Experiment 1) or an easier, but unspecified prospective memory task (Experiment 2). Participants were instructed to search for targets on each block. Participants in the prior experience condition saw targets on each block, participants in the no prior experience condition only saw targets on the fourth block, and, in Experiment 2, participants in the mixed prior experience condition encountered some of the targets on the first three blocks, and saw all the targets on the fourth block. In Experiment 1, participants in the no prior experience condition were less accurate at recognizing targets and quicker to respond on ongoing task trials than participants in the prior experience condition. In Experiment 2, we replicated the effect of prior experience on target accuracy, but there was no effect on ongoing trial response time. The mixed experience condition did not vary from the other conditions on either dependent variable, but their target accuracy varied in accordance with their experience. These findings demonstrate that prospective memory performance is influenced by experience with related tasks, thus extending our understanding of the dynamic nature of search efforts across related prospective memory tasks. This research has implications for understanding prospective memory in applied settings where targets do not reliably occur such as baggage screenings and missing person searches.

Improving self-awareness of prospective memory function after TBI using experiential feedback on a board game activity: An observational study

This study investigated whether experiential and video feedback on performance of prospective memory (PM) tasks embedded within a board game activity improved self-awareness of PM function in adults with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury. An observational pre-post study design with 26 participants from a larger trial of a 6-session PM rehabilitation programme. Sessions 3 and 4 included a board game activity with embedded time-, event-, and activity-based PM tasks. Verbal feedback was provided by therapists during the game and video feedback afterwards. Self-ratings of performance were used to divide the sample into under-estimators (n = 7), accurate estimators (n = 9) and over-estimators (n = 10) of actual PM performance. The discrepancy between self- and therapist ratings of PM performance was measured before and after the game, and following video feedback, and compared between timepoints using non-parametric statistics. Post-task self-evaluations were more accurate than pre-task self-evaluations for the under- and over-estimator groups. Under-estimators showed significant improvement in accuracy of ratings for activity-based PM. Over-estimators showed improvement for event-based PM. Further improvements after video feedback were not significant. The board game activity provided a vehicle for experiential feedback and a means of engaging both those with impaired self-awareness and heightened self-awareness of PM in cognitive rehabilitation.

Recreational drug use and prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM) impairment in recreational drug users has been documented in recent years. However, most studies on the effects of drugs on PM contain several methodological challenges, such as small sample size (< 100 participants), unrepresentative sample type (e.g., student or patient), short abstinence period (< 7 days), and lack of control of potential confounds (e.g., sleep and IQ). The present study investigated the possible consequences of recreational drug use on prospective memory, using self-report and lab-based prospective memory measures while overcoming the methodological challenges. The sample was composed of 47 non-users (27 females, age range from 18 to 50 +) and 53 drug users (21 females, age range from 18 to 50 +). Recreational drug users reported significantly more deficits in the long-term episodic, short-term habitual, and internally cued PM failures subscales of the Prospective Memory Questionnaire. However, these deficits were eliminated after controlling for covariates (e.g., age, sleep quality, general health, alcohol usage). Recreational drug users also performed worse than non-users in the short-term, long-term, event-based, and time-based PM subscales of the Royal Prince Alfred Prospective Memory Test. These results remained significant after controlling for the covariates. Drug users demonstrated greater impairments on time-based and long-term PM tasks thought to be linked with executive functioning. Taken together, the present study provides further support for recreational drug-related deficits in PM and highlights a dissociation between self-report and lab-based PM measures.

Prospective memory in bilinguals and monolinguals: ERP and behavioural correlates of prospective processing in bilinguals

Prospective memory (PM) allows us to form intentions and execute them in the future. Successful retrieval of prospective intentions depends on adequate context monitoring and disengagement from the ongoing task. These processes are also central in predicting incoming language information and guiding language production in bilinguals. We investigated if different bilingual experiences (early/late bilinguals, monolinguals) modulate performance in PM tasks that varied in attentional requirements (focal vs. non-focal). Behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) results indicated that early bilinguals differed from late bilinguals and monolinguals in how they performed the prospective task. Specifically, they showed larger differences between the ongoing activity and the prospective task in the N300 and P3b components when performing the more difficult non-focal PM task, indicating that they engaged in monitoring/updating to adapt to the task's demands. These differences were not observed in late bilinguals and monolinguals, suggesting that prospective processing is dependent on the bilingual experience.

Individual differences in memory and attention processes in prospective remembering

Successful prospective memory (PM) involves not only detecting that an environmental cue requires action (i.e., prospective component), but also retrieval of what is supposed to be done at the appropriate moment (i.e., retrospective component). The current study examined the role of attention and memory during PM tasks that placed distinct demands on detection and retrieval processes. Using a large-scale individual differences design, participants completed three PM tasks that placed high demands on detection (but low demands on retrieval) and three tasks that placed high demands on retrieval (but low demands on detection). Additionally, participants completed three attention control, retrospective memory, and working memory tasks. Latent variable structural equation modeling showed that the prospective and retrospective components of PM were jointly influenced by multiple cognitive abilities. Critically, attention and retrospective memory fully mediated the relation between working memory and prospective memory. Furthermore, only attention uniquely predicted PM detection, whereas only retrospective memory uniquely predicted PM retrieval. These findings highlight the value of independently assessing different PM components and suggest that both attention and memory abilities must be considered to fully understand the dynamic processes underlying prospective remembering.

Acute psychosocial stress impairs intention initiation in young but not older adults

Acute psychosocial stress has been shown to impair memory and cognitive control in young adults. So far, only very little empirical research is available concerning possible adult age differences in acute stress effects on cognition in general and cognitive control in particular. Accordingly, the present study set out to test these effects in a controlled laboratory setting comparing performance in a prospective memory task requiring the deployment of proactive cognitive control to successfully implement intentions. Sixty-six young (19-34 years) and 57 older adults (60-82 years) were either exposed to an established psychosocial stress procedure (Trier Social Stress Test) or an active control condition. Stress responses were measured on a fine-grained level across the entire procedure using subjective and physiological stress markers. Results suggest that the stress induction was equally successful in both age groups. While stress impaired prospective memory ability in young adults, it did not affect performance in the older adults. In particular, young adults under acute stress were more likely to completely fail the initiation of the prospective memory task resulting in zero performance. The missing stress effect on prospective memory in older adults is in line with previous studies examining broader mood effects on PM and suggests the exciting possibility that increasing age may act as a resilience factor against deterioration of cognitive control in emotionally challenging situations. AUTHOR NOTES: We thank Florence Caccia, Marta Guidotti, Nikol Hiller, Nada Kojovic, Raphaëlle Martin-Casas and Clémence Voirin for assistance with data collection, Robert Miller for advice concerning the data analyses and Antje Petzold, Jana Strahler and Moritz Walser for their advice regarding study and manuscript preparation. Preparation of this manuscript was funded by a grant (KL2303/5-1) from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to MK and CK.

Distinct monitoring strategies underlie costs and performance in prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM) describes the ability to remember to perform goal-relevant actions at an appropriate time in the future amid concurrent demands. A key contributor to PM performance is thought to be the effortful monitoring of the environment for PM-related cues, a process whose existence is typically inferred from a behavioral interference measure of reaction times. This measure, referred to as "PM costs," is an informative but indirect proxy for monitoring, and it may not be sufficient to understand PM behaviors in all situations. In this study, we asked participants to perform a visual search task with arrows that varied in difficulty while concurrently performing a delayed-recognition PM task with pictures of faces and scenes. To gain a precise measurement of monitoring behavior, we used eye-tracking to record fixations to all task-relevant stimuli and related these fixation measures to both PM costs and PM accuracy. We found that PM costs reflected dissociable monitoring strategies: higher costs were associated with early and frequent monitoring while lower costs were associated with delayed and infrequent monitoring. Moreover, the link between fixations and PM costs varied with cognitive load, and the inclusion of fixation data yielded better predictions of PM accuracy than using PM costs alone. This study demonstrates the benefit of eye-tracking to disentangle the nature of PM costs and more precisely describe strategies involved in prospective remembering.

Validity and normative data of the Chinese Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) across adolescence, adults and elderly people

The Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) is a widely-used questionnaire for evaluating individuals' memory failures in everyday life. However, whether the scale is valid for different age groups and gender, and how memory complaints change with age and gender remains less clear. This study aimed to validate the self-report PRMQ in a large Chinese sample across adolescence and adulthood and investigate age-related changes and gender differences in self-report prospective memory (PM) and retrospective memory (RM). A total of 2528 healthy individuals aged from 13 to 96 completed the Chinese version of the PRMQ. Results revealed that the PM-RM correlated factor model was the best fit model with satisfactory reliability and had measurement invariance across gender and adjacent age groups. Adolescents and adults reported similar memory complaints, while older people stated more memory difficulties. Female participants reported more PM errors than male participants, but this gender difference only showed in adolescents and adults. Taken together, these findings not only support the Chinese version of the PRMQ as a valid tool for evaluating prospective and retrospective memory difficulties across gender and adjacent age groups, but also reveal age-related changes and gender difference on self-report memory.

Integrated responding improves prospective memory accuracy

Prospective memory (PM) supports the planning and execution of future activities, and is particularly important in applied settings. We investigate a new response method that aims to improve PM accuracy by integrating the responses to an occasional PM task and a routine ongoing lexical-decision task. Instead of the most common three-choice method where the PM response replaces the ongoing response, participants were obligated to make explicit PM (present vs. absent) and ongoing (word vs. non-word) classifications on every trial through a four-choice response. Although replacement and obligatory responses were initially similar in PM accuracy, an advantage emerged with practice for the new obligatory method that was not simply due to slower responding associated with making four versus three choices. The nature of the errors differed between methods, with obligatory responding being characterised by fast PM errors and replacement by slower errors, suggesting avenues for further potential improvements in PM accuracy.

An ecologically valid examination of event-based and time-based prospective memory using immersive virtual reality: The influence of attention, memory, and executive function processes on real-world prospective memory

Studies on prospective memory (PM) predominantly assess either event- or time-based PM by implementing non-ecological laboratory-based tasks. The results deriving from these paradigms have provided findings that are discrepant with ecologically valid research paradigms that converge on the complexity and cognitive demands of everyday tasks. The Virtual Reality Everyday Assessment Lab (VR-EAL), an immersive virtual reality (VR) neuropsychological battery with enhanced ecological validity, was implemented to assess everyday event- and time-based PM, as well as the influence of other cognitive functions on everyday PM functioning. The results demonstrated the role of delayed recognition, planning, and visuospatial attention on everyday PM. Delayed recognition and planning ability were found to be central in event- and time-based PM respectively. In order of importance, delayed recognition, visuospatial attention speed, and planning ability were found to be involved in event-based PM functioning. Comparably, planning, visuospatial attention accuracy, delayed recognition, and multitasking/task-shifting ability were found to be involved in time-based PM functioning. These findings further suggest the importance of ecological validity in the study of PM, which may be achieved using immersive VR paradigms.

The benefits of emotionally salient cues on event-based prospective memory in bipolar patients and schizophrenia patients

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to carry out a delayed intention in the future. Evidence suggests that emotionally salient cues can enhance PM functions in healthy population, but whether the benefit exists in schizophrenia and bipolar patients remains unclear. This study aimed to examine and compare the potential enhancement effect of emotional PM cues in schizophrenia patients and bipolar patients. Twenty-eight clinically stable schizophrenia participants, 26 euthymic bipolar participants and 29 controls completed a computerized PM task involving PM cues with different types of valences (i.e., positive, neutral and negative). All the three groups showed better PM performance when negative PM cues were presented compared with positive and neutral PM cues. The sizes of the enhancement effects of negative PM cues were large (all Cohen's d ≥ 1.00) and comparable across three groups. Our findings suggested that patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorders could benefit from negative PM cues to an extent similar to healthy individuals, thus extended the notion of psychosis continuum to the important area of emotion-cognition interaction.

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.

Individual differences in working memory capacity predict benefits to memory from intention offloading

Research suggests that individuals with lower working memory have difficulty remembering to fulfil delayed intentions. The current study examined whether the ability to offload intentions onto the environment mitigated these deficits. Participants (N = 268) completed three versions of a delayed intention task with and without the use of reminders, along with three measures of working memory capacity. Results showed that individuals with higher working memory fulfilled more intentions when having to rely on their own memory, but this difference was eliminated when offloading was permitted. Individuals with lower working memory chose to offload more often, suggesting that they were less willing to engage in effortful maintenance of internal representations when given the option. Working memory was not associated with metacognitive confidence or optimal offloading choices based on point value. These findings suggest offloading may help circumvent capacity limitations associated with maintaining and remembering delayed intentions.

Focality and prospective memory in preschool children

We examined the influence of prospective memory (PM) cue focality in a sample of preschool children. Prior investigations in older populations indicated that focal targets were associated with enhanced PM performance, perhaps through more automatic retrieval processes. Importantly, this influential variable has not been thoroughly explored in younger samples. Over three test sessions, preschool children completed a memory task where they were shown a series of animals. During retrieval, participants were shown all of the animals except for one, and they had to name the missing animal. While engaged in this task, participants in the focal PM condition were instructed to remove particular animals (e.g., spider) from the game if they saw them. In the nonfocal condition, participants were told to remove any animal that was entirely one color (e.g., black) if they saw them during the game. The results demonstrated no difference in PM remembering between focal and nonfocal conditions. These results suggest that the effects of focality may not be present at the beginning stages of PM development. The implications for PM retrieval processes also are discussed.

Deactivation of prospective memory intentions: Examining the role of the stimulus-response link

Successful prospective remembering involves formation of a stimulus (e.g., bottle of medication and/or place where the bottle is kept)-response (e.g., taking a medication) link. We investigated the role of this link in the deactivation of no-longer-relevant prospective memory intentions, as evidenced by commission error risk. Experiment 1a contrasted two hypotheses of intention deactivation (degree of fulfillment and response frequency) by holding constant the degree of intention fulfillment (e.g., participants responded to one of two target words) while manipulating the number of times the intention was performed. Findings supported the response frequency hypothesis. Experiment 1b employed novel lure trials to examine what "stimulus" participants link the prospective memory response to-target words and/or the salient contextual cue-and compared commission errors to Experiment 1a. Findings suggested the salient context alone does not always function as the stimulus. Collectively these findings, in conjunction with those of Experiment 2 (a within-experiment replication) and a combined analysis, suggest that (a) intention deactivation is facilitated by prior responding (formation/strengthening of stimulus-response links), but additional research is needed to establish the robustness of this effect, and (b) when responding frequently to targets, participants are more likely to bind the response to the context alone than to the target or target/context combination, possibly because they learn to rely on context to predict target occurrence. The latter finding was robust and indicates that deactivation of the appropriate stimulus (target and/or context)-response link may be a critical component of reducing commission errors.

Did you hear? Auditory prospective memory cues are more beneficial for autistic than for non-autistic children and adolescents

BACKGROUND

The transition from primary to secondary school is particularly difficult for autistic children, a transition underpinned by an increase in prospective memory (PM) demands.

AIMS

To better understand PM in autistic children of the relevant age range and its underlying processes, the current study investigated the impact of cue salience (distinctiveness) on PM in autistic and non-autistic children and adolescents. The study was unique in manipulating the visual and auditory salience of PM cues. Salient cues are assumed to put lower demands on executive control resources as compared to cues that blend in with the ongoing activity.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

The children completed a computer-based categorisation task in which an event-based PM task was embedded. The salience of PM cues was manipulated (low, high visual and high auditory salience).

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Results revealed that both groups benefitted from an increase in visual and auditory salience, but only autistic participants were faster to respond to auditory cues.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Increased cue salience improved PM performance for all children. Positive effects of auditory cues were especially evident in autistic children.

Basal ganglia-orbitofrontal circuits are associated with prospective memory deficits in Wilson's disease

Degenerative changes in the basal ganglia (BG) are thought to contribute to neurological symptoms in Wilson's disease (WD). However, very little is known about whether and how the BG have an influence on prospective memory (PM) by interacting with the cerebral cortex. Here, we employed structural magnetic resonance imaging to systematically examine the effect of volume atrophy of BG on cortical thickness and to evaluate the relationships between cortical thickness of regions associated with BG atrophy and PM performance in WD. Cortical thickness atrophy in the left temporal pole and medial frontal gyrus are not related to degenerative changes in BG. Cortical thickness in the left superior frontal gyrus and right orbitofrontal gyrus (ORB) have stronger correlations with volume atrophy of the left accumbens, pallidum, and putamen in WD when compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, the cortical thickness of the right ORB is not only significantly correlated with PM performance but can also distinguish the severity of PM impairment in WD. Additionally, the middle cingulate cortex was related to volume atrophy of the accumbens, and its cortical thickness has a significant positive correlation with event-based PM. Together, these findings highlight that BG-orbitofrontal circuits may serve as neural biomarkers of PM and provide implications for the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive impairment in WD.