Age and individual differences in prospective memory during a "Virtual Week": the roles of working memory, vigilance, task regularity, and cue focality

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

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.

"Do not take that medication": negative prospective memory in Korsakoff's syndrome

BACKGROUND

While prospective memory (i.e., the ability to execute a future plan) has been extensively researched, little is known about negative prospective memory (i.e., the ability to remember not to execute a future plan) in Korsakoff's syndrome (KS). We thus evaluated both prospective memory and negative prospective memory in KS, as well as the relationship between both types of prospective memory and inhibition.

METHODS

Patients with KS and control participants were invited to press a button on the keyboard (i.e., prospective memory) or not to press a button when a cue word (e.g., negative prospective memory) was encountered.

RESULTS

The analysis demonstrated that patients with KS had more prospective memory errors (i.e., forgetting to click the keyboard when the instruction was to do so) than control participants. The analysis also demonstrated that patients with KS had more negative prospective memory errors (i.e., clicking the keyboard when the instruction was not to do so) than control participants. Similar levels of commissions and omissions were observed in patients with KS than in control participants. Interestingly, prospective and negative prospective performances were significantly correlated with performance on an inhibition assessment task.

DISCUSSION

Our study demonstrates that KS is characterized by not only difficulty in remembering to execute a future intention but also by difficulty in remembering not to execute a future intention. A decline in negative prospective memory in KS can be associated with difficulty in inhibiting no longer appropriate previously learned intentions.

Naturalistic assessments in virtual reality and in real life help resolve the age-prospective memory paradox

 Cognitive aging researchers have long reported "paradoxical" age differences in prospective memory (PM), with age deficits in laboratory settings and age benefits (or no deficits) in real-world settings. We propose a theoretical account that explains this "age-PM-paradox" as a consequence of both methodological factors and developmental changes in cognitive abilities and personality traits. To test this account, young  and older  adults   performed a series of naturalistic PM tasks in the lab and real world. Age-related PM deficits were observed in both lab-based tasks where demands were implemented using virtual reality and in-person role-playing. In contrast, older adults performed equal to or better than young adults on both real-world tasks, where demands were implemented in participants' daily lives. Consistent with our proposed account, an index of these "paradoxical" effects was partially predicted by age-related differences in working memory, vigilance, agreeableness, and neuroticism, whose predictive utility varied across task settings.

Development of the Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory: a virtual reality-based measure of everyday prospective memory abilities

INTRODUCTION

Prospective memory is the ability to remember to accomplish a task at a specified point in the future. While this cognitive ability has a large impact on daily functioning, it is rarely assessed during neuropsychological evaluations. Furthermore, existing clinical prospective memory measures are few in number and have significant limitations, including applicability to everyday functioning and appropriate norming for older adulthood. There are also many gaps in the literature on prospective memory, such as how environmental factors affect performance across the lifespan.

METHOD

In the current study, we develop and establish a new virtual reality-based measure of prospective memory, the Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory. Young adults (ages 18-29; n = 56), healthy older adults (ages 60-90; n = 94), and clinical older adults (ages 62-90; n = 30) were compared on their performances on both the developed virtual reality prospective memory test and a parallel paper-and-pencil prospective memory test to investigate the impact of test environment across participant group.

RESULTS

The Virtual Kitchen Protocol for Prospective Memory was found to adequately differentiate between young adult, healthy older adult, and clinical older adult populations - suggesting baseline ability for prospective memory assessment in clinical settings with older adults and potential for future improvement of neuropsychological evaluations. Additionally, the developed virtual prospective memory task appeared to mimic environmental factors in everyday life but did not replicate the benefit previously measured in healthy older adults' prospective memory ability in naturalistic settings.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the current study built upon extant knowledge of prospective memory in both normal and abnormal aging, suggesting future directions in replicating familiar home environments. Findings provided additional evidence toward future validation of virtual reality assessment tools in clinical neuropsychological evaluations of cognitive abilities, such as prospective memory, with both healthy and clinical older adult populations.

Age differences in routine formation: the role of automatization, motivation, and executive functions

Medication adherence can be vital for one's health, especially in older adults. However, previous research has demonstrated that medication adherence is negatively affected by age-related cognitive decline. In the current study we investigated whether older adults are able to compensate for this decline by relying more on the formation of efficient, automatized routines. To this end, we directly compared daily (placebo) medication adherence in a healthy sample of 68 younger (18-29  years) and 63 older adults (65-86  years) over a period of 4  weeks. We show that despite an age-related decline in cognitive functions (i.e., poorer working memory, prospective memory, task switching, and goal-directed control), older adults adhered better to a daily pill intake routine than younger adults did and, in line with our hypothesis about increased routine formation, reported higher subjective automaticity of pill intake. Across age groups, automatization of pill intake was related to intake regularity and conscientiousness, but not to individual differences in habit tendency as measured in the lab nor to explicit strategic planning. Crucially, the age-related increase in pill intake adherence was mediated by experienced automatization as well as motivation. These findings demonstrate that intact habitual processes and high motivation aid older adults in successfully forming daily routines.

ERP Correlates of Prospective Memory and Cue Focality in Children

Prospective memory (PM) is essential in the everyday activities of children because it involves remembering intentions for the future, such as doing their homework or bringing written parental permissions to school. Developmental studies have shown increases in PM performance throughout childhood, but the specific processes underlying this development are still under debate. In the present study, event-related potentials were used to examine whether the focality of the PM task is related to the PM increments by testing two groups of children (first and last cycle of primary school) and assessing differences in N300 (cue detection), frontal positivity (switching), parietal positivity (retrieval of the intention) and frontal slow waves (monitoring of the retrieved intention). The results showed significant differences in focality in the group of older children but no differences in any of the components for their younger counterparts. In addition, the differences between prospective and ongoing trials were smaller for younger than older children. These findings suggest that the ability to adjust attentional strategies, monitor, switch and retrieve the intention develops across childhood and affects PM performance in attentionally demanding conditions.

Alpha Oscillations in Parietal and Parietooccipital Explaining How Boredom Matters Prospective Memory

Intelligent interaction alters previous human–machine task allocation patterns. Human workers will suffer from boredom and inattention, posing a significant challenge for the human–machine interaction loop. This study aims to investigate the relationship between boredom and prospective memory, which is a memory form including the detecting, identifying, and executing functions. Thus, the attention and memory mechanisms are critical to complete prospective memory tasks when bored. This study recruited twenty-eight participants and used electroencephalography to measure the alpha power in brain regions. The results indicated that parietal oscillations had a mediation effect on prospective memory, which could be associated with the frequent unstable attention. In addition, this study found that parietooccipital oscillations linked boredom and prospective memory, and the default mode network (DMN) and visual processing during boredom could better explain this finding. The findings of this study suggested that attention management and influences of processing visual information were starting points to cope with boredom because they could help prepare for prospective memory and make optimal decisions accordingly.

Distinct monitoring strategies underlie costs and performance in prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM) describes the ability to remember to perform goal-relevant actions at an appropriate time in the future amid concurrent demands. A key contributor to PM performance is thought to be the effortful monitoring of the environment for PM-related cues, a process whose existence is typically inferred from a behavioral interference measure of reaction times. This measure, referred to as "PM costs," is an informative but indirect proxy for monitoring, and it may not be sufficient to understand PM behaviors in all situations. In this study, we asked participants to perform a visual search task with arrows that varied in difficulty while concurrently performing a delayed-recognition PM task with pictures of faces and scenes. To gain a precise measurement of monitoring behavior, we used eye-tracking to record fixations to all task-relevant stimuli and related these fixation measures to both PM costs and PM accuracy. We found that PM costs reflected dissociable monitoring strategies: higher costs were associated with early and frequent monitoring while lower costs were associated with delayed and infrequent monitoring. Moreover, the link between fixations and PM costs varied with cognitive load, and the inclusion of fixation data yielded better predictions of PM accuracy than using PM costs alone. This study demonstrates the benefit of eye-tracking to disentangle the nature of PM costs and more precisely describe strategies involved in prospective remembering.

The Processing Mechanisms of Two Types of Mixed Prospective Memory

Mixed prospective memory (MPM) needs to be executed when both external time and event cues appear. According to the clarity of time cues, MPM can be further divided into two types: time-point MPM and time-period MPM. There is no research on these two types of MPM. Whether existing theories of EBPM can explain its processing mechanisms is worth exploring. The current study was aimed at examining the differences in attentional allocation characteristics between these two types of MPM and EBPM under different difficult ongoing tasks. The results showed that the attention consumption of the two types of MPM groups was less than that of the EBPM group in the early and middle stages of high cognitive load, but there was no difference between the three groups in the later stage of the task. The attention distribution of time-point MPM and time-period MPM displayed dynamic changes: the time-point MPM only had attention consumption in the later stage, while the time-period MPM also existed in the early and middle stages. These results support dynamic multiprocess theory.

Prospective memory impairment in neurological disorders: implications and management

Prospective memory is a core neurocognitive ability that refers to memory for future intentions, such as remembering to take medications and to switch off appliances. Any breakdown in prospective memory, therefore, has serious implications for the ability to function independently in everyday life. In many neurological disorders, including Parkinson disease and dementia, prospective memory deficits are common even in the earliest stages and typically become more severe with disease progression. Consequently, clinical assessment of prospective memory is of critical importance. This article provides an overview of the various manifestations and neural bases of prospective memory deficits. To facilitate clinical decision-making, validated measures of this construct are identified and their suitability for clinical practice is discussed, focusing in particular on clinical sensitivity and psychometric properties. The article concludes by reviewing the approaches that can be used to rehabilitate different types of prospective memory impairment, and algorithms to guide the evaluation and treatment of these impairments are provided.

How Does Performing Demanding Activities Influence Prospective Memory? A Systematic Review

This paper is the first systematic review on the role of ongoing task load in prospective remembering, which was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). Forty articles published between 1995 and 2020 were included. They evaluated prospective memory (PM) performance (i.e., the ability to remember to execute a delayed intention) in adult samples aged between 19 and 50 years old when the PM cue appeared under cognitively demanding conditions. The results revealed that people are more likely to fail to remember to perform a delayed intention at the appropriate circumstances or time in the future when their cognitive resources are taxed by demanding ongoing activities. We conclude the review by highlighting that the degree of working memory and executive resources seems to account for some of the discrepant findings and by proposing directions for future research.

Instruments Measuring Prospective Memory: A Systematic and Meta-Analytic Review

OBJECTIVE

To identify the available measures to assess prospective memory (PM) abilities, to describe their content, and to quantitatively summarize the effects of various diseases on PM depending on the type of assessment.

METHOD

Three databases (PsycInfo, PsycArticles and PubMed) were searched up to June 2019 to identify the existing PM measures. The identified PM measures were classified according to the type of assessment: test batteries, single-trial procedures, questionnaires, and experimental procedures. The characteristics and psychometric properties were presented. PM performances were compared between patients with various diseases and controls depending on the type of assessment.

RESULTS

Most of the 16 measures identified evaluated both event- and time-based tasks, were linked to functional outcomes, showed empirical evidences regarding validity and reliability, and provided parallel versions. To a slightly lesser extent, few measures provided normative data, translations/adaptation into another language, cutoff scores for diagnostic purposes, qualitative scoring, parallel version, and external aids during the test. Compared to healthy controls, patients had significantly poorer performances when PM was assessed with experimental procedures. Heterogeneous data precluded the interpretation of a summary effect for test batteries, single-trial procedures, and questionnaires. Planned subgroup analyses indicated consistent PM impairment for patients compared to controls for three test batteries. However, PM complaints did not differ between patients and controls.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that the use of PM test batteries and experimental procedures are relevant for detecting performance variations in diverse clinical populations. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Differences in time-based task characteristics help to explain the age-prospective memory paradox

Prior prospective memory (PM) research shows paradoxical findings-young adults outperform older adults in laboratory settings, but the reverse is found in naturalistic settings. Moreover, young-old outperform old-old adults in laboratory settings, but show no age differences in naturalistic settings. Here we highlight how time-based task characteristics have differed systematically between studies conducted in laboratory (time-interval cues) and naturalistic settings (time-of-day cues) and argue that this apparent paradox is a function of comparing disparate task types. In three experiments, we tested this hypothesis using analogous paradigms across settings, with event-based, time-of-day, and time-interval cued PM tasks. Experiment 1 compared young (n = 40) and older (n = 53) adults on a laboratory paradigm that measured PM tasks embedded in a virtual, daily life narrative; and on a conceptually parallel paradigm using a customized smartphone application (MEMO) in actual daily life. Results revealed that on the MEMO, older adults outperformed young adults on the time-of-day tasks but did not differ on the time-interval or event-based task. In contrast, older adults performed worse than young adults in the laboratory. Experiment 2 compared PM performance in young-old (n = 64) and old-old (n = 40) adults using the same paradigms. Young-old outperformed old-old adults in the laboratory; however, group differences were not evident in daily life. Experiment 3 compared young (n = 42) and older (n = 41) adults, and largely replicated the findings of Experiment 1 using a more demanding version of MEMO. These findings provide novel and important insights into the limiting conditions of the age-PM paradox and the need for a finer theoretical delineation of time-based tasks.

Age-Related Differences in Intentional Forgetting of Prospective Memory

This study investigated age-related differences in intentional forgetting (IF) of prospective memory (memory for actions to be performed in the future) in young (19-30 years) and late-midlife adults (LMA; 57-75 years). Prospective memory (PM) performance was examined by using the Virtual Week (VW) Task. An IF procedure was embedded into the VW task and the participants were instructed to forget some of the PM tasks that they were to remember and execute later on a virtual day. The study compared performances of the young and the LMA participants in the context of event- or time-based regular and irregular tasks. The results confirmed previous findings in showing that LMA participants exhibited worse PM than younger participants in lab-based tasks. In addition, although PM and IF performances separately have been shown to be affected by cognitive aging, larger age-related differences were not found in PM performance under IF conditions.

A potential barrier to adherence? Memory for future intentions is impaired in hemodialysis patients

INTRODUCTION

End-stage renal disease (ESRD) has been associated with a range of cognitive deficits, including impaired retrospective memory and attention. Prospective memory (PM) is memory for future intentions, such as remembering to take medication on time. Prospective memory has not been examined in any ESRD patients; yet, the implications upon diet and medication management could potentially have detrimental effects on patient welfare. This is the first study to examine PM in ESRD patients being treated with hemodialysis (HD).

METHODS

Hemodialysis patients (n = 18) were compared with age-matched and education-matched controls (n = 18) on a boardgame task that emulates a typical week of activities (i.e., grocery shopping, meetings with friends), requiring the participant to remember a series of upcoming tasks. Other measures were also examined, including general cognitive decline, measures of independent living, IQ, and mood.

FINDINGS

Patients recalled significantly fewer upcoming events than the control group, suggesting an impairment of PM. No significant relationship was found between PM performance and any other measures, suggesting the difference between groups is likely due to the effects of ESRD, HD treatment, or some associated comorbidity.

DISCUSSION

This is the first study to demonstrate a PM deficit in patients undergoing HD treatment. This finding contributes to the current knowledge of the cognitive profile of patients undergoing HD while also highlighting the implications that a PM deficit may have on patient quality of life. The finding may go some way to explaining variances in patients' ability to monitor and adhere to medication and dietary regimes and, ultimately, to live independently. The study also highlights the necessity of viewing treatment for ESRD as a holistic process to maximize patient well-being.

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.

The role of time-monitoring behaviour in time-based prospective memory performance in younger and older adults

Time-based prospective memory (TB-PM) is the ability to remember to perform an action at a specific moment in the future. Accurate TB-PM performance requires several cognitive processes that are known to decline in normal ageing. This study aimed to examine associations between TB-PM performance and executive functions and time perception in younger and older adults. TB-PM was assessed with the Virtual Week paradigm. Using a within-subjects experimental manipulation, participants performed TB-PM tasks both when a clock was in constant view and when it was hidden behind a button. Results showed that younger adults performed significantly better than older adults on all TB-PM task types, and checked the clock more often, and more strategically. Clock availability improved TB-PM performance in all participants. Correlational analyses showed that TB-PM accuracy was positively related to clock-checking frequency but unrelated to time perception. Relationships between executive functions and TB-PM differed across age groups as well as TB-PM task types. The findings suggest that different cognitive processes are required for different types of TB-PM tasks and in different ages. These results highlight the importance of considering TB-PM task parameters when investigating the role of cognitive processes in PM performance and their contribution to age-related PM decline.

Prospective Memory Predictions in Aging: Increased Overconfidence in Older Adults

INTRODUCTION

This study investigated whether young and older adults can predict their future performance on an event-based prospective memory (PM) task.

METHODS

Metacognitive awareness was assessed by asking participants to give judgments-of-learning (JOLs) on an item-level for the prospective (remembering that something has to be done) and retrospective (remembering what to do) PM component. In addition, to explore possible age differences in the ability to adapt predictions to the difficulty of the task, encoding time and the relatedness between the prospective and the retrospective PM component were varied.

RESULTS

Results revealed that both age groups were sensitive to our task manipulations and adapted their predictions appropriately. Moreover, item-level JOLs indicated that for the retrospective component, young and older adults were equally accurate and slightly overconfident. For the prospective component, predictions were fairly accurate in young adults, while older adults were overconfident. Thus, results suggest that general overconfidence is increased in older adults and concerns both components of PM.

DISCUSSION

Findings regarding the conceptual differences between the prospective and retrospective components of a PM task, as well as the link between aging and metamemory in PM are discussed.

Vigilance Decrement and Enhancement Techniques: A Review

This paper presents the first comprehensive review on vigilance enhancement using both conventional and unconventional means, and further discusses the resulting contradictory findings. It highlights the key differences observed between the research findings and argues that variations of the experimental protocol could be a significant contributing factor towards such contradictory results. Furthermore, the paper reveals the effectiveness of unconventional means of enhancement in significant reduction of vigilance decrement compared to conventional means. Meanwhile, a discussion on the challenges of enhancement techniques is presented, with several suggested recommendations and alternative strategies to maintain an adequate level of vigilance for the task at hand. Additionally, this review provides evidence in support of the use of unconventional means of enhancement on vigilance studies, regardless of their practical challenges.

Memory for Weather Information in Younger and Older Adults: Tests of Verbatim and Gist Memory

Background/Study Context: Memory for specific, verbatim details tends to decline with age, and reliance on gist-based information increases. However, instructions that direct attention toward certain types of information can benefit memory accuracy for that information. Previous work has examined gist-based and verbatim memory for images, but little work has utilized stimuli that participants may study in their daily lives, such as a weather forecast.

METHODS

The current study examined how younger and older adults recall both general, gist-based information and specific, verbatim details of a weather forecast, and whether differences in the task instructions to focus on gist-based information may affect recall. Two study-test cycles with different forecasts were used to determine whether experience with the task may affect performance.

RESULTS

While there was no effect of additional gist-based instructions on recall of gist-based information, participants who received the additional instructions recalled fewer verbatim details than those who did not. There were no age-related differences in recall of the gist of the forecast, but younger adults correctly recalled more verbatim details than older adults did.

CONCLUSION

Environmental support and use of gist-based processing can allow both younger and older adults to remember information that can be useful in their daily lives. The current study informs future research on prospective memory and memory for everyday information.

Redefining the pattern of age-prospective memory-paradox: new insights on age effects in lab-based, naturalistic, and self-assigned tasks

Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering intended actions in the future, such as posting a letter when seeing a post box (event-based PM) or making a phone call at 2:00 pm (time-based PM). Studies on aging and PM have often reported negative age effects in the laboratory, but positive age effects in naturalistic tasks outside the laboratory (the so-called age–PM-paradox). The present study re-examined this pattern of the paradox by studying, for the first time, age differences in time- and event-based PM in lab-based, experimenter-generated naturalistic and self-assigned real-life PM tasks within the same sample of young and older adults. Results showed that differential age effects in and outside the laboratory were qualified by the type of PM cue. While age-related deficits were obtained for laboratory event-based tasks, no age effect was obtained for naturalistic event-based PM. Age benefits in the field were only observed for naturalistic time-based tasks, but not for participants’ own self-assigned time-based tasks. These findings indicate that the age benefits for naturalistic PM tasks may have been overestimated due to the dominant use of experimenter-generated naturalistic time-based PM tasks in previous studies. Therefore, the precise pattern of the age–PM-paradox may need redefining as mostly consisting of negative age effects in lab-based PM tasks and mostly the absence of negative age effects (rather than age benefits) in naturalistic and self-assigned tasks outside the laboratory.

The interplay of intention maintenance and cue monitoring in younger and older adults' prospective memory

The retention phase of a prospective memory (PM) task poses different challenges, including demands to store or maintain an intended action and to realize the right moment for action execution. The interplay of these processes in younger and older adults has not been explored so far. In this study, the authors examined the impact of maintenance load and task focality on PM in 84 younger and in 83 older adults. Results indicated that PM performance and ongoing task response times were strongly affected by maintenance load and age. However, a focality effect only emerged when maintenance load was low but not when attentional resources were deployed for maintaining a more demanding intention. These findings suggest that maintenance and monitoring requirements compete for similar attentional resources. Furthermore, maintenance load may affect postretrieval processes through its impact on working-memory resources, which can restrain the typical advantage of focal over nonfocal PM tasks.

Acute pain disrupts prospective memory cue detection processes

Prospective memory refers to the planning, retention, retrieval, and execution of intentions for future behaviours and it is integral to the enterprise of daily living. Although prospective memory relies upon retrospective memory and executive processes often disrupted by pain, limited research has explored the influence of acute or chronic pain on the ability to complete prospective memory tasks. In the present study we investigated the influence of acute pain on prospective memory tasks that varied in their demands on executive processes (i.e., non-focal versus focal prospective memory cues). Complex-span working memory tasks were also administered to examine whether individual differences in working memory capacity moderated any negative impact of pain on prospective memory. Acute pain significantly impaired prospective memory performance in conditions that encouraged non-focal strategic processing of prospective memory cues, but not in conditions that encouraged more spontaneous focal processing. Individual differences in working memory capacity did not moderate the effect of acute pain on non-focal prospective memory. These findings provide new insights into prospective memory dysfunction created by painful experiences.

Prospective Memory Is a Key Predictor of Functional Independence in Older Adults

OBJECTIVES

Prospective memory (PM), the ability to execute delayed intentions, has received increasing attention in neuropsychology and gerontology. Most of this research is motivated by the claim that PM is critical for maintaining functional independence; yet, there is a dearth of empirical evidence to back up the claims. Thus, the present study tested whether PM predicts functional independence in older adults using validated behavioral performance measures for both PM and functional independence.

METHODS

Fifty-eight healthy older adults performed a computerized PM paradigm, the Virtual Week task, as well as a timed version of an instrumental activities of daily living (TIADL) task. Furthermore, we assessed vocabulary, processing speed, and self-reported prospective remembering.

RESULTS

TIADL scores correlated significantly with performance in the Virtual Week task, vocabulary, and processing speed. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that vocabulary and Virtual Week performance were significant predictors for TIADL. However, self-reported PM scores did not predict everyday functioning.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings indicate that PM is an important cognitive ability for successful and independent everyday life beyond vocabulary. Moreover, the results show a substantial incremental contribution of intact PM performance for the prediction of everyday functioning by using objective PM measures. (JINS, 2018, 24, 640-645).

Aging and the strategic use of context to control prospective memory monitoring

Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost to ongoing activities. The current study investigated younger and older adults' ability to monitor strategically, which involves the heightening and relaxation of monitoring when it is contextually appropriate thereby affording conservation of limited-capacity attentional resources. Participants performed a lexical-decision task in which words or nonwords were presented in upper or lower locations of the screen. The specific condition was correctly informed that PM targets ("tor" syllable) would occur only in word trials (simple cue; Experiment 1), in word trials in the upper location (complex cue; Experiments 2 and 3A), or in red trials in the upper location (complex cue; Experiment 3B), whereas the nonspecific condition was told that targets could appear in any context. The results showed that older adults generally exhibited similar monitoring patterns as younger adults. When context varied randomly on each trial, younger and older adults in the specific condition utilized simple (Experiment 1) but not complex (Experiment 2) contextual cues to reduce monitoring in unexpected contexts relative to the nonspecific condition. Notably, younger but not older adults were able to use the location dimension of the complex cue to reduce monitoring in unexpected (lower) contexts. When context varied more predictably (i.e., changed every eight trials), both younger and older adults were able to monitor strategically in response to the complex contextual cue (Experiments 3A and 3B). Together these findings suggest that context-sensitive PM monitoring processes generally remain intact with increased age. (PsycINFO Database Record

Mild cognitive impairment and prospective memory: translating the evidence into neuropsychological practice

OBJECTIVE

There has been a recent rapid development of research characterizing prospective memory performance in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in older age. However, this body of literature remains largely separated from routine clinical practice in neuropsychology. Furthermore, there is emerging evidence of effective interventions to improve prospective memory performance. Therefore, our objective in this article was to offer a clinical neuropsychological perspective on the existing research in order to facilitate the translation of the evidence-base into clinical practice.

METHOD

By conducting a critical review of the existing research related to prospective memory and MCI, we highlight how this data can be introduced into clinical practice, either within diagnostic assessment or clinical management.

CONCLUSIONS

Prospective memory is impaired in older adults with MCI, with a pattern of performance that helps with differential diagnosis from healthy aging. Clinical neuropsychologists are encouraged to add prospective memory assessment to their toolbox for diagnostic evaluation of clients with MCI. Preliminary findings of prospective memory interventions in MCI are promising, but more work is required to determine how different approaches translate to increasing independence in everyday life.

Intraindividual Variability in Inhibition and Prospective Memory in Healthy Older Adults: Insights from Response Regularity and Rapidity

Successful prospective memory (PM) performance relies on executive functions, including inhibition. However, PM and inhibition are usually assessed in separate tasks, and analytically the focus is either on group differences or at most on interindividual differences. Conjoint measures of PM and inhibition performance that take into account intraindividual variability (IIV) are thus missing. In the present study, we assessed healthy older adults' level of performance and IIV in both inhibition and PM using a classical Go/NoGo task. We also created a prospective Go/NoGo version that embeds a PM component into the task. Using dynamic structural equation modeling, we assessed the joint effects of mean level (μ), an indicator of amplitude of fluctuations in IIV (or net IIV; intraindividual standard deviation, iSD), and an indicator of time dependency in IIV (the autoregressive parameter ϕ) in reaction times (RTs) on inhibition and PM performance. Results indicate that higher inhibition failure, but not IIV, predicted PM errors, corroborating the current literature on the involvement of prepotent response inhibition in PM processes. In turn, fastest RT latency (μ) and increased net IIV (iSD) were consistently associated with prepotent response inhibition failure, while coherence in RT pattern (ϕ) was beneficial to inhibition performance when the task was novel. Time-dependent IIV (ϕ) appears to reflect an adaptive exploration of strategies to attain optimal performance, whereas increased net IIV (iSD) may indicate inefficient sustained cognitive processes when performance is high. We discuss trade-off processes between competing tasks.

Location-based prospective memory

This study explores location-based prospective memory. People often have to remember to do things when in a particular location, such as buying tissues the next time they are in the supermarket. For event cognition theory, location is important for structuring events. However, because event cognition has not been used to examine prospective memory, the question remains of how multiple events will influence prospective memory performance. In our experiments, people delivered messages from store to store in a virtual shopping mall as an ongoing task. The prospective tasks were to do certain activities in certain stores. For Experiment 1, each trial involved one prospective memory task to be done in a single location at one of three delays. The virtual environment and location cues were effective for prospective memory, and performance was unaffected by delay. For Experiment 2, each trial involved two prospective memory tasks, given in either one or two instruction locations, and to be done in either one or two store locations. There was improved performance when people received instructions from two locations and did both tasks in one location relative to other combinations. This demonstrates that location-based event structure influences how well people perform on prospective memory tasks.

The effects of theta burst stimulation (TBS) targeting the prefrontal cortex on executive functioning: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Theta burst stimulation (TBS) is a highly efficient repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) variant employed in experimental and clinical treatment paradigms. Despite widespread usage of TBS targeting the prefrontal cortex (PFC), there has been no systematic review of the evidence linking TBS protocols to changes in task performance on common measures of prefrontal function in general, and executive functions specifically. A systematic review of the literature was conducted using PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases to identify articles examining the effects of TBS targeting the PFC on executive function task performance. Both the up-regulating (intermittent theta burst stimulation; iTBS) and down-regulating (continuous theta burst stimulation; cTBS) variants of TBS were considered. 32 (29 cTBS; 8 iTBS) studies met the inclusion criteria. Participants (n = 759; 51.41% female) were primarily young adults (M_age = 26), with one study examining the effects of cTBS and iTBS in older adults. Results from individual studies were converted to Hedge's g and random-effects models were used to estimate the overall effect size for each protocol. Age, biological sex, and control methodology were examined as potential moderators of the cTBS effect on executive function test performance. Findings indicated a- reliable attentuating effect of cTBS on executive function task performance (g = -.244, Z = -5.920, p < .001); this effect was relatively uniform across included studies (Q= 24.178, p = .838, I² = 0). Although no significant moderators of the cTBS effect were identified, laterality sub analyses indicated that the magnitude of the effect was significantly higher (M_diff = .213, Z_diff = 2.546, p = .011) for left-sided (g = -.358, Z = -5.816, p < .001) relative to right-sided (g = -.145, Z = -2.552, p = .011) PFC stimulation. A systematic review of iTBS studies revealed variability in reliability of effects though most were in the theorized direction. TBS protocols appear to be effective in modulating prefrontal cortical excitability in previously theorized directions.

Prospective memory in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a review

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the paper is to synthesize the research on prospective memory (PM) in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

METHOD

Research on PM and ADHD in youth was synthesized according to the PRISMA guidelines and a summary of the types of PM deficits typically seen in these children, as well as the methods currently available to assess and treat these deficits is provided. Suggestions on ways to better manage PM deficits in children's everyday lives are also discussed.

RESULTS

Six studies have investigated PM in children with ADHD. The majority of these studies found a deficit in time-based PM, but not event-based PM. The mechanisms underlying this deficit, however, are still unknown. There are currently no specific measures available to clinically assess PM in children and there are no specific evidence-based interventions available that specifically target PM deficits in children with ADHD.

CONCLUSION

Remediation strategies aimed at compensating for these PM deficits in daily life may be most useful. Nevertheless, more research is necessary to better understand PM in children with ADHD.

Psychometric properties of the Actual Week test: a naturalistic prospective memory task

OBJECTIVE

Prospective memory is the ability to 'remember to remember' and a facet of memory important to everyday functioning. For older adults, prospective memory slips are a common concern. In the present study, we conducted an initial validation of a paper-and-pencil adaptation of the Actual Week test, and reported on internal consistency, inter-rater and test-retest reliability, convergent and divergent validity, as well as veridicality of the task.

METHOD

Fifty-eight healthy, community-dwelling older adults were recruited from a larger randomized controlled trial and tested at baseline. The Actual Week test was a naturalistic five-day prospective memory task where participants were assigned eight hypothetical tasks to remember per day for five days. Tasks were either time-cued or event-cued and regular (i.e. occurring daily) or irregular (i.e. varied each day). The proportion of tasks that were recorded as on time and accurate was used as the primary measure of performance.

RESULTS

The Actual Week test had good internal consistency (Kuder-Richardson: r > .8), intra-test (intraclass correlation: α > .9) and test-retest reliability (r = .76). There was also evidence for convergent and divergent validity. Task performance was associated with age, but not years of education or sex.

CONCLUSION

The Actual Week test demonstrated strong psychometric qualities and promising evidence for validity as a performance-based measure of everyday prospective memory in older adults. Avenues for future studies include extending the evidence for convergent validity and evaluating feasibility and utility with other clinical populations.

The Dynamic Interplay Between Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processes Supporting Prospective Remembering

Like many dual process theories in the psychological sciences, existing models of prospective memory (i.e., remembering to execute future intentions) emphasize the role of singular top-down or bottom-up processes that act in isolation. We argue that top-down and bottom-up processes are interconnected and dynamically interact to support prospective memory. We elaborate on this dynamic multiprocess framework by focusing on recent behavioral, neuroimaging, and eye-tracking research that demonstrated the dynamic nature of monitoring (top-down) and spontaneous retrieval (bottom-up) processes in relation to contextual factors, metacognition, and individual differences. We conclude that identifying how dual processes interact with environmental and individual difference factors is crucial for advancing understanding of cognition and behavior.

Improving Prospective Memory in Healthy Older Adults and Individuals with Very Mild Alzheimer's Disease

OBJECTIVES

To test the utility of a memory-encoding strategy for improving prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to execute future goals (e.g., remembering to take medications), which plays an important role in independent living in healthy older adults and those with very mild Alzheimer's disease (AD).

DESIGN

Participants were randomly assigned to an encoding strategy condition or a standard encoding condition.

SETTING

A longitudinal study conducted at an Alzheimer's disease research center. Testing took place at the center and in a university testing room.

PARTICIPANTS

Healthy older adults (Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) = 0.0, n = 38) and those classified as being in the very mild stage of AD (CDR = 0.5, n = 34).

INTERVENTION

A simple strategy ("If I see Cue X, then I will perform Intention Y") was used to strengthen PM encoding and reduce the probability of forgetting to execute one's future plans.

MEASUREMENTS

PM was assessed using Virtual Week, a laboratory task that requires the simulation of common PM tasks (the types of tasks performed in everyday life), such as taking one's medication at breakfast.

RESULTS

The encoding strategy significantly reduced PM failures in healthy older adults and those with very mild AD and was effective regardless of the individual's episodic memory ability.

CONCLUSION

This encoding strategy was successful in reducing PM errors in healthy older adults and those with mild AD with a range of memory abilities.

Improving Prospective Memory in Persons With Parkinson Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND

Prospective memory (PM) is essential for productive and independent living and necessary for compliance with prescribed health behaviors. Parkinson disease (PD) can cause PM deficits that are associated with activity limitations and reduced quality of life. Forming implementation intentions (IIs) is an encoding strategy that may improve PM in this population.

OBJECTIVE

To determine the effect of IIs on PM performance in PD.

METHODS

This was a laboratory-based randomized controlled trial. Participants with mild to moderate PD without dementia (n = 62) performed a computerized PM test (Virtual Week) under standard instructions. One week later they were randomly allocated to perform it again while using either IIs or a rehearsal (RR) encoding strategy.

RESULTS

PM performance was better with the use of both strategies relative to standard instructions. This effect was larger for tasks with event-based compared with time-based cues. In addition, IIs resulted in a larger effect than RR for the nonrepeated tasks.

CONCLUSIONS

Strategies that support full encoding of PM cues and actions can improve PM performance among people with PD, particularly for tasks with cues that are readily available in the environment. IIs may be more effective than RR for nonrepeated tasks, but this finding warrants verification. Future work should address transfer of strategy use from the laboratory to everyday life. Targeted strategies to manage PM impairment could improve function and quality of life and significantly affect clinical care for people with PD.

Visual Acuity does not Moderate Effect Sizes of Higher-Level Cognitive Tasks

BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT

Declining visual capacities in older adults have been posited as a driving force behind adult age differences in higher-order cognitive functions (e.g., the "common cause" hypothesis of Lindenberger & Baltes, 1994, Psychology and Aging, 9, 339-355). McGowan, Patterson, and Jordan (2013, Experimental Aging Research, 39, 70-79) also found that a surprisingly large number of published cognitive aging studies failed to include adequate measures of visual acuity. However, a recent meta-analysis of three studies (La Fleur and Salthouse, 2014, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21, 1202-1208) failed to find evidence that visual acuity moderated or mediated age differences in higher-level cognitive processes. In order to provide a more extensive test of whether visual acuity moderates age differences in higher-level cognitive processes, we conducted a more extensive meta-analysis of topic.

METHODS

Using results from 456 studies, we calculated effect sizes for the main effect of age across four cognitive domains (attention, executive function, memory, and perception/language) separately for five levels of visual acuity criteria (no criteria, undisclosed criteria, self-reported acuity, 20/80-20/31, and 20/30 or better).

RESULTS

As expected, age had a significant effect on each cognitive domain. However, these age effects did not further differ as a function of visual acuity criteria.

CONCLUSION

The current meta-analytic, cross-sectional results suggest that visual acuity is not significantly related to age group differences in higher-level cognitive performance-thereby replicating La Fleur and Salthouse (2014). Further efforts are needed to determine whether other measures of visual functioning (e.g., contrast sensitivity, luminance) affect age differences in cognitive functioning.

Regularity effect in prospective memory during aging

Background

Regularity effect can affect performance in prospective memory (PM), but little is known on the cognitive processes linked to this effect. Moreover, its impacts with regard to aging remain unknown. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine regularity effect in PM in a lifespan perspective, with a sample of young, intermediate, and older adults.

Objective and design

Our study examined the regularity effect in PM in three groups of participants: 28 young adults (18–30), 16 intermediate adults (40–55), and 25 older adults (65–80). The task, adapted from the Virtual Week, was designed to manipulate the regularity of the various activities of daily life that were to be recalled (regular repeated activities vs. irregular non-repeated activities). We examine the role of several cognitive functions including certain dimensions of executive functions (planning, inhibition, shifting, and binding), short-term memory, and retrospective episodic memory to identify those involved in PM, according to regularity and age.

Results

A mixed-design ANOVA showed a main effect of task regularity and an interaction between age and regularity: an age-related difference in PM performances was found for irregular activities (older < young), but not for regular activities. All participants recalled more regular activities than irregular ones with no age effect. It appeared that recalling of regular activities only involved planning for both intermediate and older adults, while recalling of irregular ones were linked to planning, inhibition, short-term memory, binding, and retrospective episodic memory.

Conclusion

Taken together, our data suggest that planning capacities seem to play a major role in remembering to perform intended actions with advancing age. Furthermore, the age-PM-paradox may be attenuated when the experimental design is adapted by implementing a familiar context through the use of activities of daily living. The clinical implications of regularity effect are discussed.

Initial planning benefits complex prospective memory at a cost

The effect of initial planning on complex prospective memory was investigated using a virtual environment and a sample of healthy young adults (N = 34). Participants were assigned to either an initial planning or a control condition and were asked to complete a series of time- and event-based prospective memory tasks. The planning group completed the tasks more quickly and accurately than the control group. However, the total time spent, including both planning and task execution, was comparable for the two groups. Within the planning group, tasks that were planned were more likely to be completed than unplanned tasks, but inclusion of overly detailed information in the plans resulted in poorer performance. These results suggest that although initial planning can be beneficial to task completion, the complexity of a plan may contribute to decrements in performance.