published_or_final_version / Medicine / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D. in psychology)--Washington State University, August 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Aug. 19, 2009). "Department of Psychology." Includes bibliographical references (p. 32-36).

Prospective memory, memory to perform future intended actions, is an important component of independent living for older adults. The current study examined prospective memory performance in 120 adults (Young-Old; 45-64 years old and Old; 65 - 87 years old) using Virtual Week (Rendell & Craik, 2000; Rendell & Henry, 2009). Virtual week was used to assess performance for regular and irregular event based, regular and irregular time based, and time check prospective memory tasks. Prospective memory performance under conditions of stereotype threat, stereotype boost, and a neutral condition was also examined. Stereotype threat occurs when individuals fear their behavior will confirm a negative opinion regarding one’s in-group. Older adults completed fewer prospective memory tasks compared to participants in the Young-Old group. No effect of stereotype condition on completion of prospective memory tasks was observed. The implication that stereotype threat may influence memory systems differently, as well as the possible role of the positivity effect on performance is considered.

Background: Prospective memory (ProM) consists of remembering that some action needs to be performed in the future and when (detecting the Intent Trigger), and what the action is (Recalling the Content of the trigger). The Intent Trigger is bound by a forward association to the Content Recall, and the Content Recall has a backward association to the intent Trigger. In situations which present multiple, interleaving ProM tasks to operators it is not known how subsequently-presented ProM tasks interfere with the associations between the Intent Trigger and Content Recall of the original ProM task. Objective: The current study investigated the effect of presenting multiple, interleaved ProM tasks on timely detection of the Intent Trigger and accurate Recall of the Content of the original ProM task. Method: Participants encoded a ProM task (AB) in an air traffic control simulation. They then were interrupted with a second ProM task. The ProM interruption task was different from the original ProM task in either the Intent Trigger (AB, CB), Content Recall (AB, AD), or both Intent Trigger and Content Recall (i.e., a new ProM task, AB, CD). A control condition involved interrupting the participant with a weather report. Results: Detection of the Intent Trigger was significantly worse after a ProM interruption as compared to a weather interruption; a similar pattern of results, but with marginal significance, was also found for Content Recall. Additionally, a ProM task that interfered with backward association (AB, CB) was no better or worse than doing two unrelated ProM tasks (AB, CD) on the detection of the Intent Trigger. However, a task that presented a new forward association (AB, AD) was worse than performing two unrelated ProM tasks (AB, CD) on Recall of the Content. The results are discussed in the context of designing memory aids to support interleaved ProM tasks in dynamic environments.

Prospective memory (ProM) is the ability people use to realize earlier-formed intentions at a delayed time. It has been proposed to be heavily reliant executive functions, as it shares many of its characteristic attributes, including working memory as well as planning and organizational abilities. Cross-cultural literature on executive functions (EF) has previously established evidence of advanced executive functioning in East Asian children when compared to age- and educationally-matched Western counterparts. Given the close association between ProM and EF, it is surmised that East Asians may also display an advantage in this specific memory type, and that this trend would continue into early adulthood when cognitive abilities typically have matured. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to investigate whether or not Mainland Chinese adults would display the same advantage in ProM when compared to Canadian adults. Analyses indicated that the Canadians did show significant disadvantage in ProM performance despite similar executive-functioning performances. The ProM findings are discussed in terms of potential psychometric inequity but also include accounts of cultural distinctions in neural and visual processing. The contradictory results in EF and ProM are explained in relation to socio-cultural differences and limitations in the present study design. / Graduate

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According to the Multiprocess Theory (Einstein and McDaniel, 1990), prospective memory is supported by two separate cognitive processes: monitoring and spontaneous retrieval. Successful monitoring during prospective memory tasks requires attention to be divided between separate stimuli and the attention needs to be sustained throughout the course of the task. However, this theoretical account also allows for prospective memory in the absence of monitoring, as in cases where memory is retrieved spontaneously in response to some cue. In the course of this study, support for the Multiprocess Theory has been found. Using a dual-task paradigm, prospective memory targets were displayed during a lexical decision task where participants were required to make a word/nonword decision to letter strings. Prospective memory targets were found using both monitoring and spontaneous retrieval, although displaying the target in the focus of attention or not did not differentially induce monitoring. A small increase from 2% target presentation rates (Experiments 1 through 3) to 3% target presentation rates (Experiment 4) did produce evidence of task interference that reflects monitoring; however, increasing target presentation rates to 5% did not increase reaction times above those found with 3% target presentation rates. Focal prospective memory targets (words) had higher accuracy rates than nonfocal prospective memory targets (words starting with letter "g"). Inhibiting responses to the lexical decision task to respond to prospective memory targets encouraged priorities to shift attention to the lexical decision task and increased the speed of lexical decision responding across the extended task. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that sustained attention is identical to, or even a significant component of, monitoring. Sustained attention was not necessary to accomplish the prospective memory action, as variables affecting vigilance were not found to influence prospective-memory performance in the extended version of the dual-task paradigm used in this experiment. In Experiment 3, draining attention resources did negatively affect lexical decision reaction times and prospective memory performance with focal targets, but not with nonfocal targets. The strength of the lexical decision task routine was manipulated by varying the number of lexical decision practice trials given before the dual-task in Experiment 5. The strength of the routine did not affect task interference for focal or nonfocal targets. Overall, monitoring did not follow the sustained-attention pattern observed in vigilance. Prospective memory can be performed utilizing both cognitive mechanisms of monitoring and spontaneous retrieval.

No description available.

The effect of aging on prospective memory was examined. Fifty older subjects and 69 college students were given measures of both retrospective memory and the Wood Prospective Memory Test. It was found that: 1) The reliability of the WPMT subscales was lower than that required for clinical applications; 2) The WPMT subscales correlated significantly with several measures of retrospective memory; 3) There was a tendency for the WPMT subscales to have low, positive but non-significant correlations with the remaining measures of retrospective memory; 4) A self-report questionnaire on prospective memory did not correlate significantly with measures of either prospective or retrospective memory; 5) The older subjects significantly outperformed the younger subjects on the WAISR Vocabulary subtest, but performed significantly more poorly on the WPMT subscales and almost all other measures.

This study provides information regarding the validity and reliability of the Wood Prospective Meory Test (WPMT), a newly developed test consisting of three main subscales intended to measure prospective memory. Subjects were 69 college students (50 female, 19 male, age range 18-24), who were administered several memory tasks including the WPMT.The results of this study suggest that the subscales of the WPMT do not have sufficient internal reliability (.50, .60, and .44), and therefore, would be unlikely to correlate highly with any other measures. The usefulness of the WPMT as a clinical instrument is discussed.