Monitoring behaviour in a time-based prospective memory task: The involvement of executive functions and time perception

Abstract

This study investigated time-based prospective memory (PM) performance in 76 younger and 76 older adults with a time-monitoring task in which participants were required to press a designated key every 5 minutes while watching a movie. Participants were assigned to two conditions, free and fixed monitoring. In free monitoring participants could check a clock when they wanted, but in fixed monitoring they were restricted a maximum of six times every 5 minutes. We also investigated the involvement of time perception, inhibition, and updating in time-based PM performance. We hypothesised that participants with inefficiencies in those three cognitive functions would have less strategic monitoring behaviour and would also be less accurate at the target time. In the free-monitoring condition older adults checked the clock more frequently than younger participants, but presented with a similar pattern of monitoring behaviour and increased their frequency of clock checking closer to the target time. In the fixed-monitoring condition younger participants checked the clock more frequently than older adults and showed a strategic pattern of monitoring. Older adults did not show strategic use of clock checking and their monitoring function remained unchanged. Differences in PM accuracy and monitoring behaviour are discussed according to different involvement of cognitive abilities.

Keywords:

• Prospective memory
• Monitoring behaviour
• Time perception
• Inhibition
• Updating

The information in this manuscript and the manuscript itself has never been published either electronically or in print. There are no financial or other relationships that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest affecting this manuscript. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. The authors are grateful to Dr Shawn M. McClintock (Duke University School of Medicine and UT Southwestern Medical Center) for his assistance in editing the English version of this manuscript.

The information in this manuscript and the manuscript itself has never been published either electronically or in print. There are no financial or other relationships that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest affecting this manuscript. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. The authors are grateful to Dr Shawn M. McClintock (Duke University School of Medicine and UT Southwestern Medical Center) for his assistance in editing the English version of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Performance at the time production task was analysed in terms of absolute error that is a measure of performance accuracy (i.e. ∣Subjective Duration – Target Duration∣); a derived score = 0 is a perfect production, and greater than 0 lower performance (Labelle et al., 2009).

² Performance at all temporal tasks was included in the regression analyses and combined to obtain one overall score of temporal performance (Mackinlay et al., 2009).

³ Time perception was evaluated in term of mean and SDs for the time perception data (McFarland & Glisky, 2009).

⁴ Temporal performance was evaluated in term of relative errors as we did in the present study. This measure provided a standard score across the different time intervals, with coefficients above and below 1.0 indicative of overproductions and underproductions, respectively (Mioni et al., 2012).

⁵ The number of monitoring allowed in the fixed-monitoring condition was arrived at in a pilot study conducted on older and younger participants, and set on the mean of participants' performance.

⁶ When asked at the end of the experiment, participants were able to recall the content of the instruction. Older adults who forgot to press the key at the last observation reported that they were “distracted” by the movie and they did not realise the time was over.

⁷ Data refer to mean number of monitorings in each minute.