The effect of cognitive load and time stress on prospective memory and its components

Prospective memory (PM) is a kind of memory that points to the future and guides the completion of future tasks. This study focuses on Event-based PM and it is divided into a prospective and retrospective component. The former refers to the maintenance of future intention to monitor and recognize targets, while the latter refers to recall and retrieval the content of future intention. In this study, two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of time stress which is the most common source of stress in our daily lives, and people often feel that time is not enough, but there are many tasks which makes them feel stressed and prospective load which refers to the number of potential PM targets or target categories associated with one or more outstanding PM tasks, and time stress and retrospective load which refers to the number or difficulty of intentions that must be remembered and implemented to achieve a specific prospective goal on prospective memory and its components. Experiment 1 showed that prospective memory and components under low prospective load conditions were better than those under high prospective load conditions. Prospective memory and components under low time-stress conditions were better than those under high time-stress conditions. There was an interaction between prospective load and time-stress on the retrospective component. Experiment 2 showed that prospective memory and its two components under low retrospective load conditions were better than those under high retrospective load conditions. Prospective memory and its two components were better under low time-stress conditions than those under high time-stress conditions. The results showed that prospective memory and its two components performed better under low cognitive load and low time-stress conditions, and the promoting effect of prospective load on prospective memory was mainly reflected in the retrieval of low prospective memory. Both low retrospective load and low time stress are beneficial to the successful execution of prospective memory, which is embodied in the fact that both prospective and retrospective components perform better.