Elaborated spaced-retrieval and prospective memory in mild Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Prospective memory, or the timely remembering of a planned action, is conceptualised as a cognitive process demanding episodic memory and executive attention. Impairments in these skills are characteristic of the cognitive decline in early Alzheimer's disease, providing an expectation of prominent prospective memory difficulties in this population, and yet surprisingly, memory performance in early Alzheimer's disease has rarely been evaluated within a prospective memory framework. In a preliminary study we demonstrated that older adults with early Alzheimer's disease (n = 14), as compared to healthy older adults (n = 14), were significantly impaired in a simple experimental paradigm of prosp..