The role of emotional cues in event-based prospective memory

Abstract

Objective: Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to perform expected actions in the future. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of stimuli with emotional content on the prospective memory, with particular attention to different age groups.

Methods: Starting from an experimental paradigm used in a previous study (by Cona et al., 2015), we evaluated whether emotional cues (positive, negative, or neutral images) did influence a prospective memory task based on the event during the performance of an ongoing n-back task in three different age groups.

Results: A difference emerged between the three investigated groups indicating that positive emotional cues were remembered better than negative and neutral ones. In addition, older subjects resulted slower than others in responding to stimuli and showed the tendency to make more errors in the prospective memory task.

Conclusions: As hypothesized, a difference in the performance of the task appears as due to age. In general, the younger participants take the test more accurately (i.e., with fewer errors). This could be explained because the prospective memory deteriorates with increasing age. Behavioral results do not yet allow us to answer the research question on the role of emotional material in prospective memory; more research is needed to clarify these issues.

Keywords: Affective; Ageing; IAPS; Lifespan; N-back.