Prospective memory under acute stress: The role of (output) monitoring and ongoing-task demands

Möschl, Marcus; Walser, Moritz; Surrey, Caroline; Miller, Robert · 2019 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2019.107046

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Summary

This dissertation investigates the cognitive mechanisms underlying prospective memory (PM) and the deactivation of completed intentions, specifically examining how these processes are modulated by age, cognitive control availability, and acute stress. The research addresses a gap in understanding how individuals manage postponed intentions and why completed intentions sometimes fail to deactivate, leading to performance costs or erroneous repetitions (commission errors). The work is motivated by the high prevalence of PM failures in everyday life and the limited knowledge regarding the reliability of these cognitive capacities under extreme conditions like acute stress. The study comprises a comprehensive literature review and three empirical studies. The review analyzed paradigms and mechanisms of intention aftereffects, concluding that deactivation operates on a continuum rather than as a binary switch. Study 1 tested a dual-mechanisms account of aftereffects by manipulating transient cognitive-control demands in younger and older adults. Experiment 1 found that older adults made more commission errors and that medium cognitive-control demands reduced aftereffects, though this effect did not replicate in Experiment 2 with younger adults. Studies 2 and 3 examined the impact of acute stress on PM and intention deactivation. Study 2 used the Trier Social Stress Test to induce psychosocial stress, while Study 3 employed the Maastricht Acute Stress Test to induce combined physiological and psychosocial stress. Both studies manipulated task demands, including the difficulty of PM-cue detection and working memory loads, to assess stress effects on cue detection, intention retrieval, output monitoring, and ongoing-task performance. The results indicate that prospective memory is remarkably resilient to acute stress. Across all conditions, acute stress did not impair PM-cue detection or intention retrieval. However, stress significantly reduced performance costs associated with monitoring for PM cues, but only when cue detection was difficult. This suggests that acute stress shifts retrieval processes from costly, controlled monitoring toward more efficient, spontaneous retrieval. Regarding intention deactivation, Study 2 revealed a tendency for increased commission errors under stress when cues were salient and difficult to ignore. Study 3 confirmed that stress did not affect output monitoring. The lack of consistent effects of transient cognitive-control demands on aftereffects in Study 1 suggests that deactivation may rely on specific control abilities like response inhibition rather than general resource availability. The findings imply that PM and intention deactivation are tightly integrated processes that are selectively affected by external modulators. Acute stress enhances the efficiency of PM monitoring under high-demand conditions, potentially by favoring automatic over controlled processes. While intentions are generally deactivated quickly, failure to deactivate occurs primarily when cues are highly salient or in populations with reduced cognitive control, such as older adults. The thesis concludes that PM is robust against stress when supported by external reminders, contributing to a nuanced understanding of how cognitive control and stress influence goal-directed behavior.

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• prospective memory interruptions