The majority of memory research, and research on its cognitive underpinnings has thus far focused on retrospective memory, or memory for things learned or rehearsed in the past. More recently, however, prospective memory, or the memory for future intentions, has become a major area of research. It is theorized that prospective and retrospective memory may both rely on similar constituent parts such as working memory and selective attention; the relationship between these constructs and prospective memory is, however, significantly less clear than for retrospective memory. In this study we sought to further clarify the role that cognitive process play in prospective memory performance using an SEM approach that included monitoring as a mediating variable in addition to focal, non-focal, and time-based prospective memory task condition. Results suggest a monitoring component is important in both focal and non-focal conditions, and that the type of monitoring observed in this study is related primarily to proactive interference, and reflects participants’ ability to disengage from no longer relevant stimuli¬¬¬.

Prospective memory also known as remembering to remember is the process of remembering to carry out future actions. The present study investigated age-related differences in the performance of two complex prospective memory tasks for 30 younger adults (M = 19.43, SD = 2.10) and 30 older adults (M = 66.87, SD = 3.25). The two tasks had the same constraints, but were framed within different contexts (i.e., taking medications or scheduling groups). Participants performed the tasks within a simulated week based on activities they perform as part of their weekly routine, and they were given 30 minutes to develop plans to help them remember the tasks. Older adults were as accurate as younger adults in developing their plans for both tasks, but made significantly more errors in carrying out the prospective tasks. Planning style was not directly predictive of performance for the group task. However, age-related differences in performance for the medication task were related to planning style such that age-related declines in performance were observed for older adults who used a planning style that did not provide adequate memory support (i.e., list layout with time cues). Moreover, participants of all ages with lower levels of planning experience were more likely to select this ineffective planning style. These findings provide evidence that age-related differences in prospective memory can be ameliorated through the use of a familiar task and the opportunity to develop plans to remember the task. However, if participants develop an ineffective plan they will show performance decrements.

Time-based prospective memory has been found to be negatively affected by aging, possibly as a result of the declining frontal function that often accompanies aging. In the present study we investigated the role of the frontal lobes in prospective memory. Based upon their scores on a composite measure of frontal function, 32 older adults were characterized as possessing high- or low-frontal function, and were then tested on a time-based laboratory prospective memory task. Overall age effects were also assessed and each of the frontal groups was compared to a group of 32 younger adults. High-frontal functioning participants demonstrated better prospective memory than low-frontal functioning participants, and were not distinguishable from younger adults. The results of this study suggest that it is not aging per se that disrupts prospective memory performance, but it is instead the diminished frontal function seen in a subset of older adults.

The present study investigated the reliability and robustness of a new mnemonic strategy - self-imagination - in a group of memory-impaired individuals with neurological damage. Despite severe memory deficits, almost all of the participants demonstrated a self-imagination effect (SIE) for recognition memory in study 1. Moreover, the ability to benefit from self-imagination was not affected by the severity of the memory deficit. In study 3, more than half of the participants showed a SIE on a task of event-based prospective memory. The data from study 2 suggest the SIE is not attributable to semantic processing or emotional processing and indicate that self-imagination is distinct from other mnemonic strategies. Overall the findings from the present study implicate self-imagination as a new and effective mnemonic strategy. The data also indicate that when it comes to memory there is something special about processing information in relation to the self.

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Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to carry out one's intentions. This is a critical ability for children to develop in order to function independently in their daily activities. This dissertation examines the role of executive functioning in preschoolers' PM in two studies that vary the executive demand at different stages of the PM task. Study 1 investigated the role of task difficulty during the retention interval prior to the PM task. A difficult working memory task during the delay period resulted in worse PM performance in 4- and 5-year-olds compared to an easy working memory task. In addition, children's working memory, planning ability, and theory of mind correlated with PM but only in the difficult filler task condition. Study 2 examined age differences between 4- and 5-year-olds in PM task performance when the task: (1) was embedded in an easy or difficult ongoing task, (2) had an instruction to focus on the intention versus an instruction to focus on the distractor activity during the retention interval, and (3) varied in the salience of prospective targets. Overall, 5-year-olds performed better on the PM task than 4-year-olds. Children also had superior PM when targets were salient compared to non-salient and marginally superior PM when they received an instruction to monitor their intention compared to when they received an instruction to focus on the distractor activity. In addition, positive relations between executive functioning and PM were documented. Taken together, these studies suggest that disrupting or encouraging monitoring has a direct impact on PM performance in certain conditions. The implications of these results for theories that suggest differing roles for controlled processes in PM are discussed.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-22T20:49:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-01-27. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2015-08-11T03:25:32Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 Publico-00397.pdf: 509322 bytes, checksum: 8765f9f67f3ef7c3f01f454555979a6a (MD5) / O Questionário de Memória Prospectiva e Retrospectiva (QMPR) foi construído para avaliar memória subjetiva e para ter confiabilidade aceitável e validade fatorial, preditiva e concorrente. Entretanto, o QMPR nunca foi administrado numa amostra probabilística representativa da população em todas as idades na fase adulta, nem existem estudos precedentes controlados para os fatores que são conhecidos por influenciar a metamemória, tal como o status afetivo. Neste estudo, o QMPR foi aplicado em três estágios probabilísticos numa amostra representativa da população de São Paulo, Brasil, de acordo com o sexo, a idade (20-80 anos), e o status econômico (n=1042). Em seguida, com a exclusão dos indivíduos que tiveram as condições que prejudicam a memória (depressão, ansiedade, uso de psicotrópicos, e/ou teve desordens neurológicas/psiquiátricas), permaneceram 664 indivíduos em que: a) aplicaram-se análises fatoriais confirmatórias para testar modelos competidores da estrutura latente do QMPR; b) estudaram-se efeitos de sexo, da idade, da educação e do status econômico nas queixas de memória prospectiva e retrospectiva. O modelo com o melhor ajuste teve a mesma estrutura tripartida (um fator geral da memória e dois fatores ortogonais da memória prospectiva e retrospectiva) . As mulheres queixaram-se mais dos lapsos gerais da memória, em especial aquelas nos primeiros 5 anos após a menopausa, e houve mais queixas de memória prospectiva do que retrospectiva, exceto em participantes com renda familiar mais baixa. / The Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) has been shown to assess subjective memory and to have acceptable reliability and factorial, predictive and concurrent validity. However, the PRMQ has never been administered to a probability sample survey representative of all ages in adulthood, nor have previous studies controlled for factors that are known to influence metamemory, such as affective status. This study, the PRMQ was applied in a survey adopting a probabilistic three-stage cluster sample representative of the population of São Paulo, Brazil, according to sex, age (20- 80 years), and economic status (n=1042). After excluding subjects who had conditions that impair memory (depression, anxiety, used psychotropics, and/or had neurological/psychiatric disorders), in the remaining 664 individuals: a) applied confirmatory factor analyses to test competing models of the latent structure of the PRMQ; b) studied effects of sex, age, schooling and economic status on prospective and retrospective memory complaints. The model with the best fit had the same tripartite structure (general memory factor and two orthogonal prospective and retrospective memory factors). Women complained more of general memory slips, especially those in the first 5 years after menopause, and there were more complaints of prospective than retrospective memory, except in participants with lower family income. / TEDE

This dissertation describes separate but related studies that explore the prospective memory abilities of older adults and individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment/Early Alzheimer’s disease. Prospective memory (PM) refers to the type of memory utilized to execute planned actions in accordance with a specific event. PM is critical to maintaining functional independence in older adults, as it can refer to such basic acts as remembering to turn off a stove or taking one’s medication. Research suggests PM abilities decline within normal aging and to a greater extent in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and early Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Together, the studies assessed and compared the PM abilities across healthy younger and older adults, individuals with MCI, and individuals with early AD while exploring two major theories that seek to explain PM retrieval. The preparatory attentional and memory process theory of PM (PAM) assumes that PM retrieval requires resource-demanding preparatory attentional processes, whereas the Dynamic Multiprocess theory (DMPT) assumes that retrieval can also occur spontaneously (Scullin, McDaniel, & Shelton, 2013; Smith & Bayen, 2006). Study 1 used a novel laboratory PM task in which the focality and the frequency of PM cues were manipulated to compare the PM abilities of cognitively healthy younger and older adults. The results revealed significant differences in the patterns of performance between the younger and older adults based on the focality and frequency of cues which indicated different attentional allocation strategies. Study 2 examined the impact of cognitive impairment on PM abilities by using the same paradigm to compare the performance of cognitively healthy older adults to individuals with MCI and early AD. The results again revealed significant differences in the patterns of performance which indicated that these groups may have used different strategies of attentional allocation depending on the focality and cue frequency. Taken together, the findings in Studies 1 and 2 were mixed with respect to the predictions of the DMPT and PAM. The MCI group, in particular, demonstrated a unique performance profile that suggests the neuropathophysiological changes associated with this diagnosis may lead to the reliance on different PM retrieval processes compared to healthy older adults. Finally, Study 3 explored the use of a more naturalistic and ecologically valid PM task to compare the PM performance of individuals with MCI and early AD to healthy older adults without cognitive impairment. The results showed that, after taking the learning and retrospective memory scores into account, the significant differences between groups in PM accuracy on this task can mostly be accounted for by these factors. Nevertheless, the AD group was found to display significantly lower PM accuracy with event-based cues with a weak association between cue and action compared to the older adult and MCI groups after controlling for these factors. These findings provide valuable theoretical, methodological, and clinical contributions which will be discussed.

In personal task management, individual tasks are susceptible to failure at various stages due to failures in prospective memory, information fragmentation, and/or cognitive overload. To alleviate the troubles that occur in personal task management, people use various tools such as notifications and external memory aids, but there is still room for improvement in regards to maintaining distributed cognitive artifacts such as calendars and to-do lists. Improvement in staying abreast of this personal task information as opposed to being alerted of it in individual instances was the topic of exploration in this work. TaskAmbient is an ambient information display system that was designed to address these problems. TaskAmbient supports retention of individual task knowledge as well as retention of task knowledge in a user's different areas of responsibility. With this tool, I observed usage to verify or deny its ability to support prospective memory and combat the problems associated with information fragmentation and cognitive overload in respect to personal task management. In this research, studies were conducted to learn about personal task management practices and how TaskAmbient was used. In conducting these studies, I found that TaskAmbient provided value in retaining task information and staying aware of tasks in a user's various areas of responsibility. TaskAmbient showed the extendibility to other domains of personal information management. / Master of Science

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