Prospective memory

Most of the research into memory had been focussed in retrospective memory. Prospective however is the memory which allows you to remember to carry out intended actions. This can be time or event based. The attentional demand depends upon the importance and complexity of the task or memory, and involves the activation of the frontal lobes.

Studies:

1. Marsh, Hicks and Landau (1998). People reported an average of 15 plans for the week, 25% f which were not completed. Reasons were given for most of these, only 3% was due to forgetting.
2. McDaniel et al. (1998). Prospective Memory is under full or divided attention. Performance is much better however when full attention is used.
3. Hermann & Gruneberg (1993) said that people are most likely to forget to do something when they are distracted or preoccupied.

Attention and Prospective Memory

1. Marsh and Hicks (1998). Tasks involving the central executive impaired event based prospective memory performance relative to the control condition. Tasks involving the phonological loop or the visuo-spatial sketchpad however did not impair performance.
2. McDaniel and Einstein (2000). The performance of an additional ongoing task was impaired by the prospective memory task being carried out at the same time.

Frontal Lobes and prospective memory.

The prospective memory attentional system is located in the frontal lobes.

Burgess et al. (2000) looked at 65 brain damaged patients with prospective memory problems and found that there is an association between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the activity of planning and creating intentions. He also associated the Brodman's area 10 with maintaining intentions. By contrast with this, retrospective memory tasks involve anterior and posterior cingulates. Burgess et al. did another study in 2001 using PET on prospective memory in intact individuals which supported these findings. They also found evidence for different processes and structures being involved in retrospective and prospective memory.