The cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying prospective memory development
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemAutor
Cejudo García, Ana BelénEditorial
Universidad de Granada
Director
Bajo Molina, María TeresaDepartamento
Universidad de Granada. Programa de Doctorado en PsicologíaMateria
Procesos de la memoria Desarrollo humano Neurociencias Memory processes Human development Neuroscience
Fecha
2021Fecha lectura
2019-03-22Referencia bibliográfica
Cejudo García, Ana Belén. The cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying prospective memory development. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2021. [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/71560]
Patrocinador
Tesis Univ. Granada.; FPU13/03768; Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad PSI2015-65502-C2-1-PResumen
Prospective memory (PM), or the act of remembering intentions, is essential in
our daily lives. Imagine going to a medical specialist and forgetting to bring an X-ray or
forgetting to pay taxes on time. Individuals can be very forgetful. Further, since there are
individual differences in the ability to remember future intentions, people who wish to
avoid embarrassing or dangerous situations should be aware of their own challenges. It is
not uncommon for mothers or fathers to leave their babies in their car because they forgot
to drop them off at day care before going to work. In addition, people with memory
problems due to illnesses affecting brain functioning (e.g. Alzheimer’s) often have
problems remembering both the past and actions they wish to perform in the future.
Although an inability to remember past life events or learn new things is the most
perceptible effect of advanced phases of Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia, the
first observable effects often include forgetting to do such intentions as turning off the
oven or taking the house keys before leaving. Thus, these types of memory lapses may
help in the early detection of illness.
In addition, at much younger ages, when the brain is still developing and children
are still acquiring new cognitive abilities, difficulties in remembering intentions and using
strategies that facilitate better memory performance might lead to prospective forgetting
of certain daily life activities (e.g. bringing homework to school). Imagine a mother
telling a six-year-old child leaving for school, “Your permission slip is inside your bag.
Don’t forget to be bring it to your teacher, and don’t forget that this Friday, we are going on vacation, so you need to finish your homework on Thursday”. While the child is in
class and focusing on various school activities, she must also keep both intentions in mind
and complete at least one of them before leaving class. If she forgets, it could affect the
teacher’s perception of her work and class performance. Similarly, if a child forgets to
return a toy she borrowed from a friend or if she forgets a friend’s birthday, her social life
may be affected. When performing an ongoing task (OT), children of different ages have
been shown to differ in their ability to remember intentions when the cue to remember do
the action is non-focal (i.e. not part of the OT), when the cue does not explicitly appear
during the OT or when it is not salient. Imagine that a child must remember to put her
allergy spray inside her schoolbag while she is setting her pencils on her bedroom desk
(OT). If the allergy spray (the cue) is on the desk, it will be easier to remember the
intention because the cue “allergy spray” is embedded in the activity the child is doing.
However, if the allergy spray is in the kitchen, it will be harder for the child to remember
to pack it. The present work explores the effects of different types of cues on PM
performance during childhood. El recuerdo de llevar a cabo intenciones o memoria prospectiva (MP) es esencial
en nuestra vida cotidiana para completar tareas como atender a una cita, recoger un
paquete o apagar el horno antes de que la comida se queme. Fallos en este tipo de memoria
pueden implicar incluso un riesgo para nuestra salud (olvidar, por ejemplo, tomar una
medicación; (Brandimonte et al., 1996 ). Realizar con éxito una tarea de MP implica por
un lado, recordar que tienes que realizar una tarea en el momento adecuado (tarea
prospectiva) y por otro, recordar qué era lo que debías de realizar (tarea retrospectiva).
Por ejemplo: para recordar que tienes que recoger a comprar pan camino de casa, tienes
que recordar que debes hacer algo cuando vas camino de casa (tarea prospectiva) y que
lo que tienes que hacer es comprar pan (tarea retrospectiva). Para evaluar la MP en el
laboratorio se emplea un procedimiento que implica dos tareas: una tarea que el
participante realiza de forma continuada en el tiempo (tarea continua) y dentro de esta
aparece la clave prospectiva que le indicará al participante que debe realizar la segunda
tarea (tarea prospectiva) o intención (Einstein & McDaniel, 2005). El uso de estos
procedimientos ha permitido determinar que la MP se desarrolla durante la infancia hasta
la adolescencia ( Mattli et al., 2011; Zimmermann & Meier, 2006; Zöllig et al., 2007).
Aunque este desarrollo se ha relacionado con la ejecución de ciertas funciones cognitivas
como la memoria de trabajo, la inhibición o la flexibilidad cognitiva, no se ha llegado a
un acuerdo sobre que procesos están relacionados con su desarrollo (Ford et al., 2012;
Mahy & Moses, 2011; Shum et al., 2008). Los objetivos principales de esta tesis son comprender el desarrollo de la MP
explorando las diferencias entre tareas que implican distinta carga cognitiva.
Particularmente, comparando aquellas tareas donde la clave prospectiva es focal versus
aquellas en que la clave es no focal, y actividades en las que la clave es un evento versus
tareas donde la clave es la finalización de la propia tarea continua (tareas basadas en la actividad). Además, exploramos estos efectos no solo en tareas de laboratorio sino
empleando actividades que los niños realizan en el ámbito escolar.