P3‐094: Acting is the Key: New directions for the stimulation of prospective memory in mild cognitive impairment

Background: The fulfillment of delayed intended actions (e.g. taking medication\udor attending an appointment) is described in the literature as prospective\udmemory (PM), and is often pointed out as a fairly common concern for\udhealthy adults in everyday life constituting a fundamental requirement for\udindependent living across the lifespan. PM may be compromised in the\udcourse of healthy aging and may be particularly disrupted very early in\udthe neurodegenerative process, namely at the stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment\ud(MCI), which usually represents an initial phase of Alzheimer’s\uddisease (AD), severely affecting a self-sufficient life-style and causing immense\udapprehension to caregivers. Methods: We have addressed this issue\udby investigating whether enactment at encoding could improve PM\udperformance and whether these potential benefits were dependent of the\udrelationship between the retrieval cue and its associated action. We report\udfindings that explored this hypothesis in 64 young adults aged 18-39 years\ud(M ¼ 20.41, SD ¼ 3.553) and 64 educationally matched older adults\udaged 58-90 years (M ¼ 71.17, SD ¼ 7.204) using a behavioral PM testing\udparadigm with a 2 X 2 X 2 between-subject factorial design. Results: Older\udadults’ PM performance (like that of their younger counterparts) benefited\udfrom enactment at encoding and from a strong semantic cue-action relation.\udFurthermore, there were no reliable effects of encoding modality or cue-action\udrelatedness on performance accuracy or speed, despite a generalized\udslowness associated with age. Importantly, these beneficial effects were\udmaintained across the lifespan, and even under high attentional demands.\udFigure 1. Mean proportion of PM cues eliciting a correct response at the\udappropriate moment in each Method of Encoding X Cue-Action Relatedness\udX Ag