Department of Psychology and Counselling, University of Chichester.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen.
Neuropsychology. 2018 Jul;32(5):634-644. doi: 10.1037/neu0000441. Epub 2018 Apr 16.
Prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to perform future activities, is a fundamental requirement for independent living. PM tasks pervade our daily lives, and PM failures represent one of the most prominent memory concerns across the entire life span. This study aimed to address this issue by exploring the potential benefits of specific encoding strategies on memory for intentions across healthy adulthood and in the early stages of cognitive impairment.
PM performance was explored through an experimental paradigm in 96 participants: 32 amnestic mild cognitively impaired patients aged 64-87 years (M = 6.75, SD = 5.88), 32 healthy older adults aged 62-84 years (M = 76.06, SD = 6.03), and 32 younger adults 18-22 years (M = 19.75, SD = 1.16). The potential benefit of the use of enactment (i.e., physically simulating the intended action) at encoding to support an autonomous performance despite neuronal degeneration was assessed.
PM was consistently identified as a sensitive and specific indicator of cognitive impairment. Importantly, enacted encoding was consistently beneficial for PM performance of all the participants, but especially so in the case of healthy and cognitively impaired older adults. These positive results have unveiled the potential of this encoding technique to optimize attentional demands through an adaptive allocation of strategic resources across both healthy and cognitively impaired samples. Theoretical implications of this work are discussed as well as the considerable translational potential to improve social well-being.
A better understanding of the strategies that can enhance PM offers the potential for cost-effective and widely applicable tools which may support independent living across the adult life span. (PsycINFO Database Record
前瞻性记忆（PM）是记住未来活动的能力，是独立生活的基本要求。PM 任务贯穿我们的日常生活，PM 失败是整个生命周期中最突出的记忆问题之一。本研究旨在通过探索特定编码策略对健康成年人和认知障碍早期阶段意图记忆的潜在益处来解决这一问题。
通过实验范式探索 96 名参与者的 PM 表现：32 名遗忘型轻度认知障碍患者（年龄 64-87 岁，M=6.75，SD=5.88），32 名健康老年人（年龄 62-84 岁，M=76.06，SD=6.03）和 32 名年轻成年人（年龄 18-22 岁，M=19.75，SD=1.16）。评估了在编码时使用实施（即，物理模拟预期动作）以支持自主表现的潜在益处，尽管存在神经元退化。
PM 一直被确定为认知障碍的敏感和特异性指标。重要的是，实施编码对所有参与者的 PM 表现都有持续的益处，但对健康和认知障碍老年人尤其如此。这些积极的结果揭示了这种编码技术通过在健康和认知障碍样本中自适应分配策略资源来优化注意力需求的潜力。本文还讨论了这项工作的理论意义以及改善社交幸福感的巨大转化潜力。
更好地了解可以增强 PM 的策略为提供具有成本效益和广泛适用性的工具提供了潜力，这些工具可能支持整个成年生活的独立生活。
