Prospective memory is fascinating. Your entire future success in life relies on it working well. 

Why?

Well, let me ask you this:

How do you know that in the future you will remember to remember? 

To test our ability to remember the need to remember in the future, researchers S. L. Penningroth and W.D. Scott asked a bunch of university students the following question:

“Imagine that your friend has asked you to make a call tomorrow morning to provide a personal recommendation for a full-time job. You must wait until morning to call because that is when the potential employer will be in the office.”

As Beatrice G. Kuhlmann discusses with reference to this study in, Prospective Memory, students participating in the study listed different strategies. To remind themselves of this future event, they might remember to make the call by:

• Mentally rehearsing the call 


• Using an app for notification


• Leaving a note where they would be sure to see it


• Setting a specific time to make the call

These are all examples of metacognition that helps us remember future intentions. Without both intention and metacognition, we are all at risk of some serious prospective memory failure. 

That’s why being able to remember to do things and perform actions in the future is so critical. And having a healthy prospective memory is what helps us remember future events successfully.

Let’s look more at this important type of memory and make sure you understand its importance, how to preserve it and even how to make it better. That way you can stop missing so many appointments and forgetting to do the things that matter. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXon2RZIJuc

What Is Prospective Memory?

Prospective memory is literally defined by remembering to do things in the future. This means that prospective memory is primarily linked to tasks such as:

• Attending a class


• Going to an appointment


• Completing a task at work on time


• Taking medication


• Remembering to pack a lunch

The Two Main Prospective Memory Tasks

There are at least two kinds of tasks that prospective memory influences:

• Time-based tasks


• Event-based tasks

Taking medicine at a particular time of day is a time-based task because it happens at a specific time.

Another example would be baking.

If you warm the oven for 10 minutes before putting the cookies inside, that task is time-based and your prospective memory operates in accordance.

You can also explore these kinds of tasks in relation to procedural memory (the kind of memory that helps you remember how to perform certain tasks, like riding a bike).

By contrast, event-based tasks typically involve some kind of cue in your environment.

Here’s an example of what I mean:

You see a grocery store on your way home.

It reminds you that someone in your family asked you to pick up some apples or tea earlier in the day. In other words, prospective memory does its job when something you see, hear or feel cues you to think about the task.

In this case, it is seeing the grocery store that reminds you of the task someone asked you to remember in the future.

<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_24550" style="width: 1280px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-24550">Seeing a grocery store can trigger your memory that you need to do some shopping.</figcaption></figure>

How Do Researchers Study Prospective Memory?

In order to analyze how people engage in prospective memory tasks, researchers create models. They do this by finding volunteers to participate in research studies that involve time-based or event-based tasks.

For example, S.J. Gilbert devised a study testing how people “offload” their future tasks. By creating a model of how people behave, he noticed an interesting difference in leaving reminders for yourself that you might recognize:

“I might write the details of an appointment on a piece of paper, which reminds me of where I need to go, but only after I have remembered that I need to go somewhere and consulted this record.”

In other words, making a note about an appointment in the future is no guarantee that you will remember to look at the note. You might even be confused by notes that you left for yourself. Thus, the implication of this study is that:

• We often need more than written reminders


• We need to be very clear about the written reminders we do leave for ourselves

One thing I’ve needed to learn as I age is to be much clearer in the notes I make for myself.

If my notes about future tasks are too cryptic, I wind up wasting time trying to understand what I needed to do. Taking a second to make sure that future reminders are clear and cue the future task as explicitly as possible is very valuable.

What Does A Model Of Prospective Memory Look Like? 

It’s pretty fascinating, actually!

A typical model of prospective memory shows that there’s a process that is divided into three categories. Here’s an example:

<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_24551" style="width: 1244px;"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-24551">A simple model of prospective memory showing three phases with several steps in each. From the book, Prospective Memory (Current Issues In Memory).</figcaption></figure>

• Prospective memory, which involves:
  
  
  
  • Intention formation
  
  
  • Intention retention
  
  
  • Intention retrieval
  
  
  
  


• Monitoring, which involves:
  
  
  
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