Why does prospective memory fail

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Why would highly skilled professionals forget to perform a simple task they have executed without difficulty thousands of times before? These kinds of oversights occur in professions as diverse as aviation and computer programming, but research from psychological science reveals that these lapses may not reflect carelessness or lack of skill but failures of prospective memory. Key Dismukes, a scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, reviews the rapidly growing field of research on prospective memory, highlighting the various ways in which characteristics of everyday tasks interact with normal cognitive processes to produce memory failures that sometimes have disastrous consequences.

Failures of prospective memory typically occur when we form an intention to do something later, become engaged with various other tasks, and lose focus on the thing we originally intended to do. Despite the name, prospective memory actually depends on several cognitive processes, including planning, attention, and task management.

Common in everyday life, these memory lapses are mostly annoying, but can have tragic consequences. However, much of what we intend to do in our everyday lives, whether at home or at work, involves habitual tasks repeated over time. And when it comes to these kinds of habitual tasks, our intentions may not be explicit. In previous research, Dismukes and colleagues identified several types of situations that can lead to prospective memory failures. They found that interruptions and disruptions to habitual processes, which are irritating enough in everyday life, can be fatal in some occupational settings.

For all the negative attention that multitasking has received in recent years, it is perhaps no surprise that multitasking is also a major cause of prospective memory failures. We seem to have adapted fairly well to juggling several tasks simultaneously. To defend against prospective memory failures and their potentially disastrous consequences, professionals in aviation and medicine now rely on specific memory tools, including checklists.

Research also reveals that implementation intentions, identifying when and where a specific intention will be carried out, can help guard against such failures in everyday life. Along with checklists and implementation intentions, Dismukes and others have highlighted several other measures that can help to remember and carry out intended actions: Use external memory aids such as the alerting calendar on cell phones Avoid multitasking when one of your tasks is critical Carry out crucial tasks now instead of putting them off until later Create reminder cues that stand out and put them in a difficult-to-miss spot Link the target task to a habit that you have already established "Rather than blaming individuals for inadvertent lapses in prospective memory, organizations can improve safety by supporting the use of these measures," argues Dismukes.

Journal Reference : R. Prospective Memory in Workplace and Everyday Situations. ScienceDaily, 31 July Association for Psychological Science. When we forget to remember: Failures in prospective memory range from annoying to lethal. Retrieved November 12, from www. To identify the responsible brain regions, scientists used fMRI to analyze the The scientists were able to And we may wonder: Are these memory lapses a Above all, ScienceDaily shares links with sites in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated.

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