Abstract
Prospective memory is a cognitive process that comprises the encoding and maintenance of an intention until the appropriate moment of its retrieval. It is of highly relevance for an independent everyday life, especially in older adults; however, there is ample evidence that prospective memory declines with increasing age. Because most studies have used neutral stimuli, it is still an open question how emotional factors influence age-related differences in prospective remembering. The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of emotional material on prospective memory encoding, monitoring, maintaining, and retrieval in younger and older adults using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. We tested 24 younger adults (M = 26.4 years) and 20 older adults (M = 68.1 years) using a picture one-back task as ongoing activity with an embedded prospective memory instruction. The experimental task consisted of three sessions. In each session, participants had to encode series of images that represented the prospective memory cues for the consecutive block. The images were either of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral valence. The pictures used in the ongoing task were likewise of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral valence. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to assess the neural correlates of intention encoding, maintenance, and self-initiated retrieval. We did not find age differences between younger and older adults on the behavioral level. However, the ERP results revealed an interesting pattern that suggested for both age groups elevated attentional processing of emotional cues during encoding indicated by an elevated LPP for the emotional cues. Additionally, younger adults showed increased activity for unpleasant cues. During the maintenance phase, both age groups engaged in strategic monitoring especially for pleasant cues, which led to enhanced sustained positivity. During retrieval, older adults showed increased activity of ERP components related to cue detection and retrieval mainly for pleasant cues indicating enhanced relevance for those cues. In conclusion, emotional material may influence prospective remembering in older adults differently than in younger adults by supporting a mixture of top-down and bottom-up controlled processing. The results demonstrated a negativity bias in younger adults and a positivity bias in older adults.
Highlights
Remembering to buy bread on the way home and remembering to do the taxes on the weekend are typical examples of prospective memory tasks in everyday life
Contrary to the conclusions by Altgassen et al (2010), our findings indicate that the detection of emotional cues does rely on spontaneous processing and on more strategic monitoring for the emotional prospective memory cues, which is supported by the allocation of attentional resources toward the emotional cues (Olofsson et al, 2008)
The present results suggested that prospective memory performance and the underlying neural processing can be modulated by emotional material
Summary
Remembering to buy bread on the way home and remembering to do the taxes on the weekend are typical examples of prospective memory tasks in everyday life. Prospective memory describes the ability to remember and execute delayed intentions in the future (Kliegel et al, 2008a). Remembering to buy bread on the way home is a relatively easy task, it still might be forgotten when we are stressed by work or excited to go to birthday drinks after work. Based on everyday life experience, it is comprehensible that emotions cannot only interact and interfere with planned intentions and goals. The present study investigated how emotional material modulates the encoding, maintaining, and retrieving of intentions in younger and older adults
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