Prospective Memory Monitoring Research Articles

Rule monitoring ability predicts event-based prospective memory performance in individuals with TBI.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that prospective memory (PM) abilities are impaired following traumatic brain injury (TBI). PM refers to the ability to remember to complete a planned action following a delay. PM post-TBI has been shown to be related to performance on neuropsychological tests of executive functioning and retrospective episodic memory (RM). However, the relative influence of impairments in RM versus executive functioning on PM performance post-TBI remains uninvestigated. In the current study, PM and neuropsychological test performance were examined in 45 persons with a history of moderate to severe TBI at least 1 year before enrollment. Regression analyses examined the relative contributions of RM and executive functioning in the prediction of PM performance on the Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test (RBMT). Results indicated that scores on tests of delayed RM and rule monitoring (i.e., ability to avoid making errors on executive measures) were the strongest predictors of PM. When the interaction between RM impairment and rule monitoring was examined, a positive relationship between PM and rule monitoring was found only in TBI participants with impaired RM. Results suggest that PM performance is dependent upon rule monitoring abilities only when RM is impaired following TBI.

Event-based prospective memory deficits in individuals with high depressive symptomatology: Problems controlling attentional resources?

Depression has been found to be related to neurocognitive deficits in areas important to successful prospective memory (PM) performance, including executive function, attention, and retrospective memory. However, research specific to depression and PM has produced a mixed pattern of results. The current study further examined the task conditions in which event-based PM deficits may emerge in individuals with high depressive symptomatology (HDS) relative to individuals with low depressive symptomatology (LDS) and the capacity of HDS individuals to allocate attentional resources to event-based PM tasks. Sixty-four participants (32 HDS, 32 LDS) were required to make a PM response when target words were presented during an ongoing lexical decision task. When the importance of the ongoing task was emphasized, response time costs to the ongoing task, and PM accuracy, did not differ between the HDS and LDS groups. This finding is consistent with previous research demonstrating that event-based PM task accuracy is not always impaired by depression, even when the PM task is resource demanding. When the importance of the PM task was emphasized, costs to the ongoing task further increased for both groups, indicating an increased allocation of attentional resources to the PM task. Crucially, while a corresponding improvement in PM accuracy was observed in the LDS group when the importance of the PM task was emphasized, this was not true for the HDS group. The lack of improved PM accuracy in the HDS group compared with the LDS group despite evidence of increased cognitive resources allocated to PM tasks may have been due to inefficiency in the application of the allocated attention, a dimension likely related to executive function difficulties in depression. Qualitatively different resource allocation patterns may underlie PM monitoring in HDS versus LDS individuals.

The development of time-based prospective memory in childhood: the role of working memory updating.

This large-scale study examined the development of time-based prospective memory (PM) across childhood and the roles that working memory updating and time monitoring play in driving age effects in PM performance. One hundred and ninety-seven children aged 5 to 14 years completed a time-based PM task where working memory updating load was manipulated within individuals using a dual task design. Results revealed age-related increases in PM performance across childhood. Working memory updating load had a negative impact on PM performance and monitoring behavior in older children, but this effect was smaller in younger children. Moreover, the frequency as well as the pattern of time monitoring predicted children's PM performance. Our interpretation of these results is that processes involved in children's PM may show a qualitative shift over development from simple, nonstrategic monitoring behavior to more strategic monitoring based on internal temporal models that rely specifically on working memory updating resources. We discuss this interpretation with regard to possible trade-off effects in younger children as well as alternative accounts.

Age, Focal Processing, and Monitoring in Event-Based Prospective Memory

While there is some consensus that prospective memory (PM) declines with age, the reasons for differences in performance across age groups are not fully understood. This experiment examines two factors that are likely to affect the magnitude of observed age group differences: type of PM task and whether participants monitor the task environment for the opportunity to complete the PM task. Younger and older adults were engaged in an ongoing test of short-term memory and were asked to perform one of two different event-based PM tasks. Younger adults performed better than older adults on both focal and nonfocal PM tasks. In addition, younger adults were able to perform both types of tasks equally well, but older adults were more successful on the focal task than on the nonfocal task. Age group differences in self-reported PM monitoring were also evident and were related to performance. These findings and their implications for current theoretical conceptions of PM aging are discussed.

Monitoring behaviour in a time-based prospective memory task: The involvement of executive functions and time perception

This study investigated time-based prospective memory (PM) performance in 76 younger and 76 older adults with a time-monitoring task in which participants were required to press a designated key every 5 minutes while watching a movie. Participants were assigned to two conditions, free and fixed monitoring. In free monitoring participants could check a clock when they wanted, but in fixed monitoring they were restricted a maximum of six times every 5 minutes. We also investigated the involvement of time perception, inhibition, and updating in time-based PM performance. We hypothesised that participants with inefficiencies in those three cognitive functions would have less strategic monitoring behaviour and would also be less accurate at the target time. In the free-monitoring condition older adults checked the clock more frequently than younger participants, but presented with a similar pattern of monitoring behaviour and increased their frequency of clock checking closer to the target time. In the fixed-monitoring condition younger participants checked the clock more frequently than older adults and showed a strategic pattern of monitoring. Older adults did not show strategic use of clock checking and their monitoring function remained unchanged. Differences in PM accuracy and monitoring behaviour are discussed according to different involvement of cognitive abilities.

Retraction of Savine, McDaniel, Shelton, and Scullin (2012).

Reports the retraction of "A characterization of individual differences in prospective memory monitoring using the Complex Ongoing Serial Task" by Adam C. Savine, Mark A. McDaniel, Jill Talley Shelton and Michael K. Scullin (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2012[May], Vol 141[2], 337-362). The following article from the May 2012 issue is being retracted. This retraction follows the results of an investigation into the work of Adam C. Savine, published in the Federal Register by the Office of Research Integrity on March 7, 2013. The Office of Research Integrity found that Adam C. Savine engaged in research misconduct by falsifying results to show that prospective memory is influenced by three dissociable underlying monitoring patterns, which are stable within individuals over time and are influenced by personality and cognitive differences. Data were modified to support the three category model and to show (1) that individuals fitting into each of the three categories exhibited differential patterns of prospective memory performance and ongoing task performance in Tables 1-3 and Figures 5-8; and (2) that certain cognitive and personality differences were predictive of distinct monitoring approaches within the three categories in Figure 9. His co-authors were unaware of his actions and were not involved in falsifying data. (The abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-25213-001.).

The impact of emotion on prospective memory and monitoring: No pain, big gain

The emotionally enhanced memory effect is robust across studies of retrospective memory, with heightened recall for items with emotional content (e.g., words like "murder") relative to neutral items (e.g., words like "envelope"). Only a handful of studies have examined the influence of emotion on prospective memory (PM), with mixed results. In some cases emotion enhances PM, and in others it impairs PM. Interpretation of these findings is clouded by methodological differences across studies and by the fact that, to date, no study has examined the impact of emotion on PM monitoring. In our study, we assessed PM performance when PM targets were neutral, negative, and positive, and also investigated monitoring across these different PM target types. Participants showed heightened PM performance for positive and negative relative to neutral targets, yet there was no evidence of additional monitoring for emotional targets. In fact, measures of monitoring were significantly reduced when the PM targets were emotional rather than neutral. Our findings suggest that it is possible to boost PM performance in a focal task using emotional cues, and that the use of emotional cues reduces the need for monitoring.

A characterization of individual differences in prospective memory monitoring using the Complex Ongoing Serial Task.

Prospective memory--remembering to retrieve and execute future goals--is essential to daily life. Prospective remembering is often achieved through effortful monitoring; however, potential individual differences in monitoring patterns have not been characterized. We propose 3 candidate models to characterize the individual differences present in prospective memory monitoring: attentional focus, secondary memory retrieval, and information thresholding. Two experiments using a novel paradigm, the Complex Ongoing Serial Task (COST), investigated the resource allocation patterns underlying individual differences in monitoring. Individuals exhibited differential resource allocation patterns, and the differences remained relatively stable across experimental sessions. Resource allocation patterns associated with information thresholding (high prospective memory, preserved ongoing task performance) and attentional focus (high prospective memory, inefficient ongoing task performance) were superior to secondary memory retrieval (low prospective memory, very inefficient ongoing task performance). Importantly, personality (openness, prevention focus) and cognitive (primary, working, and secondary memory) individual differences influenced monitoring patterns. This research represents the first explicit attempt to elucidate individual differences in prospective memory monitoring patterns.

A role for right medial prefrontal cortex in accurate feeling-of-knowing judgments: evidence from patients with lesions to frontal cortex

The hypothesis that prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in accurate predictions of episodic memory performance was tested using the feeling-of-knowing (FOK) paradigm. Fourteen patients with a broad spectrum of damage to the frontal cortex and matched controls read sentences and later were tested for recall memory, confidence judgments, and FOK accuracy using as cues the sentences with the final word missing. While frontal patients were impaired at recall and recognition memory, they were able to make accurate confidence judgments about their recall attempts. By contrast, as a group, the patients were markedly impaired in the accuracy of their prospective FOK judgments. Lesion analysis of frontal patients with clear FOK impairment revealed an overlapping region of damage in right medial prefrontal cortex. These findings provide functional and anatomical evidence for a dissociation between recall confidence and prospective memory monitoring and are discussed in terms of familiarity and access theories of FOK predictions.