How Does Performing Demanding Activities Influence Prospective Memory? A Systematic Review

Matos, Patrícia; Pereira, Diana; Albuquerque, Pedro B.; Santos, Flávia H. · 2020 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.5709/acp-0302-0

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

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Summary

This systematic review investigates how the cognitive load of ongoing activities influences prospective memory (PM), defined as the ability to remember to execute a delayed intention. The study addresses conflicting findings in existing literature regarding whether demanding background tasks impair PM performance. Motivated by the need to clarify these discrepancies, the authors aimed to determine the prevalence of PM omission errors under cognitively demanding conditions and to identify which specific load conditions most significantly affect event-based (EBPM) and time-based (TBPM) prospective memory. The authors conducted a systematic review following PRISMA guidelines, searching Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science for articles published between 1995 and 2020. They included 40 peer-reviewed studies involving young and middle-aged adults that manipulated cognitive load during an ongoing task (OT) while participants performed PM tasks. Load manipulations included increasing primary OT difficulty, adding a secondary OT, or using task-switching procedures. The review categorized studies based on the type of PM task and the nature of the cognitive load, specifically distinguishing between tasks requiring working memory (WM) storage versus those requiring executive processing. The results indicate that PM performance is not uniformly impaired by cognitive load; rather, the impact depends on the specific resources taxed. Increasing WM storage demands (e.g., color-matching or articulatory suppression tasks) generally did not impair PM performance, even when cues were focal and specific. However, increasing demands on WM executive processing (e.g., n-back tasks, mental arithmetic, or planning tasks) consistently led to PM failures. Similarly, adding secondary tasks that required executive control, such as random number generation or monitoring for specific sequences, significantly reduced PM accuracy. In contrast, secondary tasks involving simple monitoring or storage often did not disrupt PM. The review found that EBPM tasks were studied more frequently than TBPM tasks, and most experiments focused on omission errors rather than commission errors. The authors conclude that the degree of working memory and executive resources required by the ongoing task accounts for the discrepant findings in the literature. PM failures are more likely when the ongoing activity taxes executive control and strategic monitoring resources, supporting theories that emphasize the role of controlled processing in prospective remembering. The review highlights that salient or focal cues may mitigate some load effects, but high executive demands generally overwhelm the resources necessary for cue detection and intention retrieval. These findings clarify the conditions under which PM is vulnerable and suggest future research should further examine the interplay between cue characteristics and specific types of cognitive load.

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• prospective memory interruptions