The broad long-term objective of the proposed research is to learn about prospective memory and its relationship to other cognitive systems such as attention, perception, and especially retrospective memory. Prospective memory has received little attention from memory researchers in contrast to retrospective memory which has received little attention from memory researchers in contrast to retrospective memory which has been extensively studied. In some sense, prospective memory--remembering to carry out plans in the future--can be thought of as the logical complement of retrospective memory--remembering previously learned information, but even though we have an extensive framework for thinking about retrospective memory (e.g., short-term memory, procedural/episodic/semantic memory), such a framework has not yet been developed for prospective memory.
The first aim of the proposed research is to construct a framework for categorizing prospective memory tasks.
The second aim i s to validate this framework by means of the existing literature on prospective memory.
The third aim i s to test core predictions of this framework by means of new experimental work, which will focus primarily on age-related change in prospective memory. The proposal makes use of a lifespan approach, a design that allows for continuous sampling across ages so that the data will be suitable for quantitative modeling techniques. Additionally, frontal lobe and Alzheimer's patients will be included to learn more about the break-down of the specific components of prospective memory and the neural architecture which supports this memory function. The proposed research on prospective memory will give insight into age-related cognitive decline and cognitive dysfunction in patients affected by accident or disease.
| McIsaac, Heather K; Eich, Eric (2002) Vantage point in episodic memory. Psychon Bull Rev 9:146-50 |
