Abstract
Individuals with-Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) often complain of difficulty remembering to carry out intended actions. We investigated the relative efficacy of a different reminder in performing a time-based Prospective Memory (PM) task. The PM performance of 24 participants with amnesic Mild Cognitive Impairment (AMCI) has been compared with that of 24 healthy controls. As ongoing task, samples of the Attentive Matrices Test were used. In the PM task subjects were requested to write an “X” every three minutes during a 9 minutes period. Participants received the task consisting either in a low demand condition (checking number “5”) or in a high demand condition (checking numbers “1”, “4”, “9”). In order to be as punctual as possible, participants were asked to simultaneously write the “X” at task time expiration, using a digital clock. Time monitoring was recorded. Reminder occurring was manipulated in that participants could receive critical, accidental or completely absent reminder. As expected, high cognitive demand was negatively correlated with PM performance and time monitoring. Unexpectedly, all the participants did not benefit from the critical reminder. These findings demonstrated, from a behavioral perspective, that Working Memory (WM) and PM processes are not based on the same memory system and PM may require WM resources at high demand.
Highlights
Prospective Memory (PM), defined as memory for actions to be performed in the future, is one of the most fundamental aspects of everyday activities that have inspired a large numbers of researches [1,2]
Seeing that time-based PM performances are improved by contingent reminder [26,27,28], the main aim of the present research was to determine whether in Amnesic Mild Cognitive Impairment (AMCI) patients the Working Memory (WM) ongoing task load produce effect on PM task depending on the amount of the WM load: being stronger at higher demands of WM, while PM task at lower levels of WM demand were not affected
A mixed 2 (Groups) × 3 (Reminder occurrence) × 2 (Cognitive demand of ongoing task) analysis of variance (ANOVA) model was used to evaluate the accuracy in the PM task
Summary
Prospective Memory (PM), defined as memory for actions to be performed in the future, is one of the most fundamental aspects of everyday activities that have inspired a large numbers of researches [1,2]. PM is a complex process involving at least four steps: 1) intention formation—the period during which the future activities are planned (i.e., what to do and when to do it); 2) intention retention—the period during which the intention is held in memory while other activities are occurring (i.e., ongoing task); 3) intention initiation, that is the point at which the appropriate cue triggers an effortful and controlled search of memory for the intention; 4) intention execution—when the retrieval context occurs and the action of the intended action is performed [8].
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