Calendaring and alarms can improve naturalistic time-based prospective memory for youth infected with HIV

ABSTRACT

Individuals with HIV disease often evidence deficits in prospective memory (PM), which interfere with daily functioning and increase the risk of suboptimal health behaviours. This study examined the benefits of simple encoding and cueing supports on naturalistic time-based PM in 47 HIV-positive young adults. All participants completed a naturalistic time-based PM task in which they were instructed to text the examiner once per day for seven days at a specified time. Participants were randomised into (1) a Calendaring condition in which they created a calendar event in their mobile telephone for the specified texting time; (2) an Alarm condition in which they programmed an alarm into their mobile telephone for the specified texting time; (3) a Combined calendaring and alarm condition; and (4) a Control condition. Participants in the Combined condition demonstrated significantly better naturalistic PM performance than participants in the Control and Calendaring conditions. Findings indicate that HIV-positive young people may benefit from a combined calendaring and alarm supportive strategy for successful execution of future intentions in daily life.

KEYWORDS:

• Infectious disease
• neuropsychological rehabilitation
• episodic memory
• cue salience
• AIDS dementia complex

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Dr. Erica Weber for her role in the design of the study intervention.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by NIH grants [R01DA034497] (SNK, SPW), [R01MH073419] (SPW), and [T32DA31098].