Dual pathways to prospective remembering

McDaniel, Mark A.; Umanath, Sharda; Einstein, Gilles O.; Waldum, Emily R. · 2015 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00392

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Summary

This review article examines the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying prospective memory (PM), specifically focusing on the "multiprocess framework" which posits two distinct retrieval pathways: top-down attentional monitoring and bottom-up spontaneous retrieval. The authors address a critical methodological issue in PM research: experimental demand characteristics often induce participants to monitor for cues, thereby masking the detection of spontaneous retrieval processes. The paper aims to clarify how specific task parameters can isolate these processes and proposes a revised neurocognitive model to better interpret existing neuroimaging data. The authors analyze behavioral evidence from laboratory paradigms designed to discourage monitoring, such as using "focal" cues (where the ongoing task naturally processes the cue features) versus "non-focal" cues, and employing "suspended intention" designs where participants are told the PM task is inactive. Behavioral studies cited show that focal cues support high PM performance even when monitoring is minimized, indicating spontaneous retrieval, whereas non-focal cues require monitoring. The review then evaluates neuroimaging literature, contrasting the authors' dual-pathway view with the "Attention to Delayed Intention" (AtoDI) model, which assumes a uniform maintenance and retrieval process. Key findings indicate that sustained neural activity during the ongoing task, reflecting strategic monitoring, is consistently observed in non-focal PM tasks involving frontoparietal networks. In contrast, focal PM tasks often show little to no sustained activity, supporting the claim that they rely on spontaneous retrieval mediated by medial temporal lobes rather than active maintenance. However, the authors note that focal tasks can still recruit monitoring if task demands encourage it. Regarding transient activity at cue presentation, the authors argue that retrieval in monitored (non-focal) tasks is likely top-down, whereas retrieval in spontaneous (focal) tasks is bottom-up, suggesting distinct neural signatures that current literature has not fully disentangled due to a lack of studies directly comparing both conditions. The significance of this work lies in its refinement of the neurocognitive understanding of PM. By distinguishing between monitoring and spontaneous retrieval, the authors explain variability in PM performance across populations, such as older adults who may preserve spontaneous retrieval but lose monitoring capacity. The proposed "dual pathways" model challenges existing interpretations that assume PM always requires active maintenance, urging future neuroimaging studies to explicitly manipulate focal/non-focal conditions and separate sustained from transient activity to accurately map the neural underpinnings of prospective remembering.

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• prospective memory interruptions