19 Facts About Prospective memory

Prospective memory is a form of memory that involves remembering to perform a planned action or recall a planned intention at some future point in time.

Prospective memory tasks are common in daily life and range from the relatively simple to extreme life-or-death situations.

In contrast to prospective memory, retrospective memory involves remembering people, events, or words that have been encountered in the past.

Whereas retrospective memory requires only the recall of past events, prospective memory requires the exercise of retrospective memory at a time that has not yet occurred.

Retrospective memory involves the memory of what we know, containing informational content; prospective memory focuses on when to act, rather than focusing on informational content.

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Time-based prospective memory involves remembering to perform an action at a particular point in time.

The difference in task performance between the two types of prospective memory suggests that the intended action was better triggered by external cues of the event-based task than internal cues of the time-based task.

Prospective memory received wide attention when Ulric Neisser included a paper presented by John A Meacham at the 1975 American Psychological Association meeting in Chicago in his 1982 edited volume, Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts.

Preparatory attentional and memory theory proposes two types of processes involved in successful prospective memory performance.

Retrospective Prospective memory is used to remember specifically what intention is supposed to be performed in the future, and the monitoring process is needed to be able to remember to perform this action at the correct condition or time.

Studies using positron emission tomography trace a slight increase in blood flow to the frontal lobe in participants completing prospective memory tasks involving remembering a planned action, while performing other tasks.

Studies using PET have shown that the parietal lobe is activated when participants engage in prospective memory tasks involving visual information such as remembering a series of numbers.

Methods that test prospective memory require the distinction between retrospective memory, which is remembering information, and prospective memory, which is remembering information for the future.

Prospective memory requires retrospective memory because one must remember the information itself in order to act in the future.

Technological assessments were created in order to more appropriately evaluate prospective memory by combining real life intentions with experimental control.

Therefore, prospective memory can be enhanced by avoiding low motivational states.

Prospective memory is crucial for normal functioning since people form future intentions and remember to carry out past intentions on a daily basis.

Prospective memory is required to remember when to take oral contraceptive pills.

Prospective memory has been implicated in the steering cognition model of how children coordinate their attention and response to learning tasks in school.