An important and often neglected aspect of memory is the ability to remember to carry out future tasks. This is also referred to as prospective memory (PM). PM requires several different skills, such as monitoring time, remembering what the task is, when it needs to be done, and initiating the action. PM is known to be commonly affected by brain injury, but very little is known about which aspects of performance are affected.
Researchers in New York addressed this question in a 2012 paper published in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation. The study investigated the performance of 25 people with brain injury and a control group of 25 healthy participants on the following variables:
- Time until completion of a task
- Difficulty of an ongoing activity performed while waiting for the final task
- Whether the task to be performed is an action or verbal
- Type of cue to perform the final task (time delay versus external cue)
The brain injured participants were impaired on all of these variables. PM performance was also compared to standard tests of attention, memory, executive function and self-report measures of PM. This was in order to discover the underlying deficits responsible for poor PM performance.
Poor executive functioning was found to be the most important factor for impaired PM, while the most significant difference between the brain injured and healthy participants was in the ability to bring to mind an intended action. Self-report measures of PM were found to have no relation to actual performance, suggesting brain injured people may also be hindered by a lack of insight into their own prospective memory.
These findings suggest that rehabilitation of PM should focus specifically on executive functions and the ability to initiate intentions. Helping people to gain greater self awareness could also significantly improve performance.
Reference
Raskin, S., Buckheit, C. & Waxman, A. (2012) Effect of cue, type of response, time delay and two different ongoing tasks on prospective memory functioning after acquired brain injury. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 22 (1), 40-64.
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