Nonfocal Prospective Memory Research Articles

The role of cue salience in prospective memory commission errors in nonperformed nonfocal tasks.

Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to execute an intention in the future without having a permanent reminder. These intentions can be performed when they are not relevant or become no-longer needed, the so-called "commission errors". The present study aims to understand the effect of cue salience on PM commission errors with unperformed intentions and on the ongoing task performance-associated costs. Through a between-subjects design, eighty-one participants were assigned to 3 conditions: the no-PM condition, which served as control, and the salient and nonsalient conditions, which were asked to perform a lexical decision task and an incomplete nonfocal prospective memory task (i.e. no PM cues were presented). Subsequently, participants were instructed to no longer execute the prospective intention. In the second phase, a lexical decision task occurred again, including irrelevant PM cues, which should not be answered as such. In the salient condition, cues were salient (i.e. presented in red or blue background). In contrast, in the nonsalient condition, PM cues appeared on a black background, as any other stimuli. In the no-PM control condition, participants only performed an LDT. A commission error occurred when the (irrelevant) intention was performed in this second phase. Results showed that more participants performed a commission error in the presence of salient cues, even when PM intentions became irrelevant. Additionally, when cues were not salient, participants took longer to answer the LDT, as reasoned by the spontaneous retrieval theory. These findings are discussed according to the dual-mechanism account.

Self-reported strategy use and prospective memory: The roles of cue focality and task importance.

Interest in the metacognitive aspects of prospective memory (PM) is growing. Yet, the interplay between participants' metacognitive awareness of PM task demands and features that contribute to successful PM require further attention. To this aim, participants in the current study completed laboratory-based PM tasks of varying difficulty (cue focality: focal, nonfocal-category, or nonfocal-syllable) and reported their strategy use and perceptions of PM task importance. Most participants reported using a strategy regardless of cue focality. However, only under the most challenging condition (i.e., nonfocal-syllable) did participants who reported using a strategy exhibit better PM performance compared to those who did not use a strategy. Additionally, strategy use and cue focality were independently associated with greater costs to ongoing task performance: strategy users exhibited greater slowing relative to individuals who did not use a strategy, and the extent of slowing was greater as the task difficulty increased across cue focality. Finally, perceived task importance appeared to play an important role in the interactive link between cue focality and strategy use on PM performance for the more challenging, nonfocal PM tasks. Specifically, moderation analyses suggested that greater perceived task importance alone may improve the likelihood of PM success for moderately challenging PM tasks (i.e., nonfocal-category), but for the most challenging PM tasks (i.e., nonfocal-syllable), individuals' strategy use was still associated with better PM performance. The present study expands our understanding of metacognition's role in PM performance and has implications for everyday PM performance.

Effect of negative emotion on prospective memory and its different components

Prospective memory is an important and complex social cognitive ability, which is easily disturbed by negative emotions. According to the relationship between prospective memory cues and ongoing tasks, prospective memory can be divided into focal prospective memory and non-focal prospective memory. This study focuses on the influence of negative emotions on different types of prospective memory. In Experiment 1, 117 participants were recruited, using a 2 (emotion: negative, neutral) × 2 (cue focality: focal, non-focal) between-subjects design to initially explore whether negative emotions can interfere with the prospective memory of both focal cue and non-focal cue. The results show that negative emotions simultaneously reduce both types of prospective memory performance. At the same time, negative emotions occupy additional attention resources and impair the prospective component of prospective memory with non-focal cues. In Experiment 2, 64 participants were recruited to improve the difficulty of the retrospective component of prospective memory with non-focal cues, and the influence of negative emotions on different components of prospective memory with non-focal cues was further explored. The results show that negative emotions can impair both the prospective and retrospective components of prospective memory. In short, the results of this study indicate that negative emotion can impair prospective memory, and the impairment effect is not limited by the cue type of prospective memory. Meanwhile, negative emotion will occupy more attentional resources and simultaneously affect the prospective and retrospective components of prospective memory.

How do the cognitive processes matter in the event-based preschoolers' prospective memory?

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to perform an intended action at a specific future moment. The current study examined the impact of age, task focality, and cue salience on PM in children aged 2 to 6 years, based on the multiprocess theory of PM and the executive framework of PM development. Additionally, the study explored the relationship between various cognitive abilities and their association with PM performance. A total of 224 preschool-aged children, aged 2-6, engaged in event-based PM tasks with varying cognitive demands. The tasks were either focal or nonfocal, with salient or nonsalient cues. Additionally, individual differences in cognitive abilities were measured. The results support previous indications that even very young children can successfully complete event-based PM tasks. The accuracy of PM display improved with age, especially between the ages of 3 and 4. Better performance was observed in focal PM tasks compared to nonfocal PM tasks. Additionally, preschoolers' PM performance correlated with various cognitive abilities, including fluid intelligence, retrospective memory, inhibitory control, working memory, and language ability. These correlations varied depending on the child's age and the task's nature. For both focal and nonfocal PM tasks, cognitive abilities partially mediated the relationship between age and PM performance. In summary, this study comprehensively explores the specific roles played by age and fundamental cognitive abilities in event-based PM performance among preschool-aged children.

A thorough examination of cue specificity and task-appropriateness in defining focal and nonfocal prospective memory tasks

ABSTRACT Prospective memory (PM) – memory for future intentions – has a core term called focality which describes how closely a PM task relates to an ongoing task. When a close relationship exists between an ongoing and PM task, the task is classified as focal (loose relationships are classified as nonfocal). Competing PM theories differ primarily in explanations for how focality changes participants’ approaches. Researchers classify PM intentions as focal or nonfocal in two ways: (1) task appropriateness, congruency (TAP) or incongruency (TIP) of processing to complete both tasks, and (2) cue specificity, specific or general task cues. Independently manipulating this ambiguity in defining “focality” was our current focus. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group, a focal PM condition, or one of three nonfocal conditions. Their ongoing task involved a semantic judgment (Experiment 1) or an orthographic judgment (Experiment 2). Cue specificity impacted PM accuracy consistently, favouring specific cues. Task-appropriateness impacted PM accuracy in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2 which showed protective effects for specific, whole-word PM cues – emphasizing the role that deeper processing has on PM success. These studies highlight the ambiguity in the operational definition of focality and provide the groundwork for continued refinement of the definition.

Prospective memory in bilinguals and monolinguals: ERP and behavioural correlates of prospective processing in bilinguals

Prospective memory (PM) allows us to form intentions and execute them in the future. Successful retrieval of prospective intentions depends on adequate context monitoring and disengagement from the ongoing task. These processes are also central in predicting incoming language information and guiding language production in bilinguals. We investigated if different bilingual experiences (early/late bilinguals, monolinguals) modulate performance in PM tasks that varied in attentional requirements (focal vs. non-focal). Behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) results indicated that early bilinguals differed from late bilinguals and monolinguals in how they performed the prospective task. Specifically, they showed larger differences between the ongoing activity and the prospective task in the N300 and P3b components when performing the more difficult non-focal PM task, indicating that they engaged in monitoring/updating to adapt to the task’s demands. These differences were not observed in late bilinguals and monolinguals, suggesting that prospective processing is dependent on the bilingual experience.

Prospective Memory and Regional Functional Connectivity in Subcortical Ischemic Vascular Disease.

Objectives: Patients with subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD) often have prominent frontal dysfunction. However, it remains unclear how SIVD affects prospective memory (PM), which strongly relies on the frontoparietal network. The present study aimed to investigate PM performance in patients with early stage SIVD as compared to those with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to older adults with normal cognition, and to explore the neural correlates of PM deficits.Method: Patients with very-mild to mild dementia due to SIVD or AD and normal controls (NC) aged above 60 years were recruited. Seventy-three participants (20 SIVD, 22 AD, and 31 NC) underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), cognitive screening tests, and a computerized PM test. Sixty-five of these participants (19 SIVD, 20 AD, and 26 NC) also received resting-state functional MRI.Results: The group with SIVD had significantly fewer PM hits than the control group on both time-based and non-focal event-based PM tasks. Among patients in the very early stage, only those with SIVD but not AD performed significantly worse than the controls. Correlational analyses showed that non-focal event-based PM in SIVD was positively correlated with regional homogeneity in bilateral superior and middle frontal gyri, while time-based PM was not significantly associated with regional homogeneity in any of the regions of interest within the dorsal frontoparietal regions.Conclusions: The findings of this study highlight the vulnerability of non-focal event-based PM to the disruption of regional functional connectivity in bilateral superior and middle frontal gyri in patients with SIVD.

Does Cue Focality Modulate Age-related Performance in Prospective Memory? An fMRI Investigation

ABSTRACT How prospective memory (PM) weakens with increasing age has been largely debated. We hypothesized that automatic and strategic PM processes, respectively mediated by focal and non-focal cues, are differently affected by aging, even starting from 50–60 years of age. We investigated this issue using a 2 × 2 design in which focal and non-focal experimental conditions were created by varying the conjoint nature of the ongoing task (lexical decision vs. syllable matching tasks) and the PM cue (words vs. syllables). In the whole-brain analysis we found that the left inferior frontal gyrus and the middle cingulate cortex were more activated when young compared to older individuals performed a PM task; moreover, the anterior cingulate cortex was selectively activated during non-focal PM when the cues were words. In a region-of-interest analysis we observed that the medial and the lateral portions of the rostral prefrontal cortex were associated with the focal and non-focal conditions respectively, more in young than in older adults. Our findings provide evidence in support of early age-related differences in automatic/strategic PM functioning.

Comparing costs in time-based and event-based prospective memory

ABSTRACT Although much recent research has focused on event-based prospective memory (PM), fewer studies have compared event- and time-based PM. In the current study, two experiments were conducted to directly compare ongoing task costs of focal and non-focal event-based tasks with a time-based task. In the second experiment, an external reminder of the task was present to test whether this reduced the cost of the time-based task. PM accuracy was significantly greater for the focal conditions, as predicted. Response times (RT) were highest in the non-focal tasks, with similar RTs in the focal and time-based tasks. Clock check frequency was significantly related to making a PM response in the time-based task, with clock checks increasing as the 7 min target time approached. While time-based tasks may be more difficult to complete, they do not seem to result in the speed cost to an ongoing task that non-focal PM tasks do.

An investigation of the relations between stress and prospective memory

ABSTRACT Prospective memory (PM), or remembering to perform intentions in the future, has important implications for one’s daily functioning and quality of life. Another common human experience is stress. Despite the significance and ubiquity of both PM and stress, our understanding of the relations between them is limited. The aim of the current study was to further delineate the relations between acute stress, chronic stress, non-focal event-based PM, and time-based PM. The results of the study revealed that acute stress induction after PM intention formation did not contribute to differences in non-focal event-based PM performance or time-based PM performance. However, self-reported chronic stress was significantly correlated with enhanced monitoring and time-based PM. In the present study, participants may have had optimal levels of enduring stress that contributed to enhanced monitoring behaviour (i.e. the prospective component of PM) and the ability to complete time-based intentions.

Investigating prospective memory via eye tracking: No evidence for a monitoring deficit in older adults

Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to perform intended actions in the future. Older adults in particular have been shown to be negatively affected by PM tasks that require a high amount of attentional resources (i.e., nonfocal tasks). This age-related PM deficit has been attributed to reduced target monitoring in this age group older adults. However, this conclusion was based on indirect measures of monitoring, such as costs of the ongoing task.The present study set out to 1) investigate older adults' PM target monitoring by, for the first time, employing a direct measure (i.e., eye tracking), 2) assess differences in monitoring between PM tasks that differ in their focality, and 3) examine whether differences in PM monitoring can indeed explain older adults' reduced PM performance in nonfocal tasks.Results demonstrate that while older, but not younger adults, showed reduced performance in a nonfocal PM task, overt monitoring (eye movements) of these groups did not differ between focality conditions. Further analyses showed that older adults' performance was still reduced on the strategically more demanding task after controlling for overt target monitoring (i.e., including only trials in which the participant monitored).In contrast to indirect measures of cue monitoring, our findings illustrate that older adults' deficits on nonfocal PM tasks cannot (exclusively) be explained by reduced monitoring. Instead, processing that takes place after target monitoring are discussed as possible mechanisms underlying older adults' reduced PM performance in nonfocal tasks.

Prospective Memory: Age related change is influenced by APOE genotype

ABSTRACT Non-focal prospective memory (PM) is sensitive to age-related decline; an additional impairment in focal PM is characteristic of mild stage Alzheimer’s disease. This research explored whether, by mid-adulthood, the distinct demands of focal and non-focal PM expose differences in carriers of an APOE ε4 allele, a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Thirty-three young and 55 mid-age adults, differentiated by APOE genotype, completed a category-decision task with a concurrent focal or non-focal PM demand. Only mid-age ε4 carriers showed a cost of carrying a focal PM intention. In addition, mid-age ε4 carriers showed a significantly greater cost of carrying a non-focal PM intention than young ε4 carriers, supporting a profile of accelerated aging. Consistency in the profile of cost differences observed in mid-age ε4 carriers and pathological aging may indicate premature vulnerability. Future research correlating a shift in PM performance with early genotype differences in brain-based markers of decline is important.

Age Differences in Prospective Memory: A Further Evaluation of the Executive Framework

ABSTRACTAccording to the executive framework of prospective memory (PM), age-related differences in PM performance are mediated by age-related differences in executive functioning (EF). The present study further explored this framework by examining which specific components of EF are associated with PM differences between and within three age groups. A group of children (7–9 years; N = 108), adolescents (12–14 years; N = 112), and adults (17–23 years; N = 106) performed focal- and non-focal event-based PM (EBPM) tasks, a time-based PM (TBPM) task, and tasks measuring EF components. Differences between age groups in focal EBPM, non-focal EBPM, and TBPM performance were mediated by, respectively, differences in interference control and response inhibition, performance on the ongoing task, and differences in working memory and response inhibition. However, within-age group analyses only revealed WM updating as significant predictor of TBPM performance in the adolescent group. These results support and further qualify the executive framework of PM. The differences in outcome dependent on the examined age range might be important for explaining mixed results of previous studies regarding the precise EF components underlying age-related PM task performance differences.

How did I remember to do that? Self-reported strategy use for laboratory prospective memory tasks

ABSTRACTThe role of metacognition in prospective memory (PM) has received relatively little attention. This study combined data from several experiments to identify the strategy repertoire employed during a classic laboratory PM task and to determine whether self-reported strategy was related to performance. Participants (N = 668) completed either a focal or nonfocal PM task embedded in an ongoing lexical decision task. The results indicated that participants reported the same strategy repertoire regardless of PM task focality. Participants who reported using a strategy performed better than those who did not report using one, and this was especially true under nonfocal conditions. Self-reported strategy use was also associated with more cost to the ongoing task when the opportunity to complete the PM task was present. These findings add to what is known about the metacognitive components of PM and underscore the need for additional research in this area.

Retrieval in prospective memory: Multiple processes or just delay?

In prospective memory (PM) research, a common finding is that PM accuracy is greater using focal, rather than nonfocal, cues. Under the multiprocess framework, the high PM performance for focal cues (cues that facilitate noticing of the target), often in the absence of task interference, reflects people's ability to rely on spontaneous retrieval processes. By contrast, nonfocal cues (cues that do not facilitate noticing) require monitoring. A competing explanation suggests that a single process underlies focal versus nonfocal PM: People adjust their delay in ongoing responding to allow enough time for PM information to reach awareness (delay theory). Participants' lower nonfocal performance arises because they fail to delay responding to a sufficient degree; with focal cues, the PM information accumulation rate is fast enough that no delay is necessary (and thus most everyone performs well). We sought to improve nonfocal PM performance by pairing a PM task with fast information accumulation to an ongoing task for which the requisite information accumulated more slowly. Reasoning from delay theory, we expected PM accuracy levels in this nonfocal PM task to approximate that observed in a focal PM task (for which the PM tasks were identical). In contrast to this expectation, the focal condition displayed significantly higher PM accuracy (despite demonstrating a reliably shorter response delay). In light of these findings, we concluded that the multiprocess interpretation is favoured.

Stress and prospective memory: What is the role of cortisol?

Studies investigating effects of acute stress on Prospective Memory (PM) so far yielded heterogeneous findings. Although results were commonly attributed to stress-induced changes in cortisol, past research did not disentangle effects of cortisol from the effects of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation and cognitive reappraisal. The present study therefore aimed at investigating the mere effect of cortisol on PM tasks that differently involve prefrontal brain regions (nonfocal vs. focal PM tasks) via a placebo-controlled oral pharmacological intake of 10 mg hydrocortisone mimicking physiological responses to stress. Contrary to our prediction, enhanced levels of cortisol did not affect PM accuracy and monitoring costs, neither for the focal nor the nonfocal PM tasks. These results suggest that changes of cortisol levels do not underlie potential stress effects on PM. Further exploratory results revealed that PM performance was higher in the 3 pm than in the 1 pm placebo group. This means that PM performance, independently of effects of cortisol, seem to vary throughout the day.

How executive functions are associated with event-based and time-based prospective memory during childhood

A key developmental task of childhood is to gain autonomy and independence from parents and caregivers. Critical to this individualization process is the development of prospective memory (PM), the capacity to remember to carry out future intentions. In recent studies, children's PM performance has been associated with executive functions (EF). A closer inspection of the literature, however, suggests a differential impact of the three EF (updating, inhibition, and shifting) across different PM task types. The current study examined EF and PM capacities of 212 6- to 11-year-old children, examining for the first time both focal and nonfocal event-based PM tasks as well as a time-based PM task in a single sample. Results show that age-differences did not persist above and beyond age differences in children's executive resources. Specifically, updating predicted children's performance on all PM tasks, inhibition predicted performance on both event-based PM tasks, whereas shifting was specifically deployed by the nonfocal event-based task. Supplementary analyses of the time-based PM task illustrate how children monitor the progression of time and how preparatory processes support PM task performance. In sum, the current study presents the first comprehensive look at the specific role of age and three core EF in school-aged children's PM performance.

Response dynamics of event-based prospective memory retrieval in mouse tracking

Prospective memory (PM) is typically measured using keypresses in laboratory paradigms, which therefore assess only discrete, stage-like processes. In the present study we manipulated focal and nonfocal PM cue conditions, as well as participants' focus on different aspects of the PM/ongoing task set, using the methodology to capture dynamic computer mouse movements. The software captured mouse trajectories during lexical decisions and PM responses. We replicated many findings typical in the PM literature, including the accuracy advantage for focal over nonfocal conditions and longer ongoing-task response times for nonfocal conditions. Participants' movement trajectories during PM responses revealed evidence for both spontaneous-retrieval and strategic-monitoring processes in focal and nonfocal PM retrieval conditions. During trials suggestive of spontaneous retrieval, mouse trajectories initially went toward the typical ongoing-task response but turned mid-trajectory toward the PM response field on the opposite side of the computer screen. In nonfocal conditions, these trajectory reversals had a wider arc and took longer to complete, reflecting the likely greater retrospective retrieval requirements of nonfocal conditions. Regarding what are more likely to be strategic-monitoring processes, a significant portion of responses traveled directly to the PM response field, as though people were prepared to make such a response.

The Cost of Prospective Memory in Children: The Role of Cue Focality.

Prospective memory (PM) is an essential ability in daily life, since it involves remembering to perform an intention. While PM largely develops during childhood and adolescence, its underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. In general, age differences in PM have been found with tasks in which the prospective cues are not part of the ongoing activity (non-focal PM tasks). In the present study, we evaluated the cognitive cost produced by a PM task over the ongoing activity by comparing the performance of a single-task condition with that of an ongoing activity condition involving a prospective intention. Specifically, to determine the impact of cue focality on performance as a function of age, we tested two groups of children (6 and 11 years old) in three experimental conditions: single, focal and non-focal prospective cues. In the single-task condition, children were only asked to perform the ongoing task (to categorize images as animal or non-animal). In the focal condition, in addition to performing the ongoing activity, participants were asked to press different keys whenever the image appearing on the screen was a kite or a ball. In the non-focal condition, children were to press the keys if the color of the frame of the screen changed to magenta or gray. Although reaction times were greater for the non-focal conditions in both age groups, the results showed worse performance on the ongoing activity for both the focal and the non-focal conditions (relative to the single-task condition) in the younger children. This difference was less pronounced in older children so that response times for focal and non-focal cues differed from the single condition, but the difference in performance between focal and single task conditions was not reliable. These findings, which are partly in line with the dual process framework (McDaniel et al., 2015), suggest that while non-focal prospective cues compromise attentional control in younger and older children, focal cues seem to rely on less effortful processes in older children.

The general facilitation effect of implementation intentions on prospective memory performance in patients with schizophrenia

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to execute a planned intention in the future. It can be divided into event- and time-based, according to the nature of the PM cue. Event-based PM cues can be classified as focal or non-focal. Patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) have been found to be impaired in both event- and time-based PM. PM has been found to be improved by implementation intentions, which is an encoding strategy in the format of “if X then Y”. This study examined the effect of implementation intentions on a non-focal event-based and a time-based PM task in patients with SCZ.Methods: Forty-two patients with SCZ and 42 healthy controls were allocated to either an implementation intention or a control PM instruction condition and were asked to complete two PM tasks. Results: Implementation intentions was found to improve performance in both the non-focal event-based and time-based PM tasks in patients with SCZ and healthy controls, with no costs to the ongoing task. The improvement in time-based PM performance in the implementation intentions condition was partially mediated by the frequency of clock checking behaviour. Conclusions: Implementation intentions can facilitate PM performance in patients with SCZ and has the potential to be used as a clinical intervention tool.