Meta-prospective memory accuracy in young adults with and without depressive symptoms

Abstract

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember an intention in the future. Individuals with depression are candidates for PM failures, resulting in detrimental consequences, such as forgetting to take a medication or implement therapeutic techniques; inaccurate assessments of one’s PM abilities can exacerbate these issues. The current study examined if appraisals about one’s prospective memory (meta-PM) performance differs between healthy and depressed adults. Data were gathered from 137 adults and included self-reported depression, PM beliefs, objective PM, and assessment of executive functions (EFs). Participants were separated into depressed/healthy categories based on a self-report measure. There was a non-significant correlation between self-reported PM and objective PM for both depressed (r = .06, p = .61) and healthy (r = .08, p = .52) groups, suggesting both groups had inaccurate meta-PM. There were non-significant differences in meta-PM between these groups (Fisher’s Z = −0.09, p = .93), but exploratory gender analyses revealed women’s meta-PM was significantly less accurate than men’s. Women had higher reports of depression and PM complaints compared to men. This study lends evidence that depression is not necessarily related to worse meta-PM accuracy, despite depression’s association with memory complaints, and that women are at greater risk for inaccurate meta-PM.