Sub-clinical compulsive checkers’ prospective memory is impaired

Abstract

We explored whether prospective memory task performance is impaired in sub-clinical compulsive checkers. Participants were 126 undergraduate students who were divided into three groups: high, medium, low checkers. Participants completed two objective tests of their episodic prospective memory, one event- and one time-cued, as well as two questionnaires that measured their subjective prospective memory. The results indicated that medium and high checkers performed worse than low checkers on the objective event-cued prospective memory task but that the three groups performed similarly on the objective time-cued prospective memory task. Moreover, high checkers reported experiencing every type of prospective memory failure more frequently than either the medium or the low checkers. We suggest that individuals with compulsive checking tendencies have an impaired prospective memory and that their increased experiences with prospective memory failures causes their intrusive concerns that tasks were not completed.