Neural Correlates of Prospective Memory

Event-based prospective memory (PM) requires remembering the delayed execution of an intended action in response to a pre-specified PM cue while being actively engaged in an ongoing task in which the cue is embedded. So far, experimental paradigms vary as to whether they require participants to immediately stop working on the ongoing task whenever they encounter a PM cue and directly switch to the prospective action (task-switch approach). Alternatively, several other paradigms used in the literature encourage participants to continue working on the cue as ongoing task item and only then perform the prospective action (dual-task approach). The present study explores the possible behavioural and electrophysiological effects that both approaches may have on PM performance (Experiment 1) and the cognitive processes underlying a PM task and an attentional task (Experiment 2A/B). In sum, findings demonstrate that it makes a difference which task approached is applied and suggest that task switch paradigms might result in more resource demanding procedures and that a PM task requires different processes from those required for an attentional task, especially when we used a dual task paradigm.