‘I forgot my doctor’s appointment! I didn’t buy the supplies I needed for science class! I missed calling my boss to confirm the meeting! ‘ These and countless other examples are known as blunders, although in reality they are failures in prospective memory. When we talk about memory, most people tend to think about things that have already happened, although in reality, it also has a fundamental role in the things that we plan to do in the more or less immediate future, something we know as prospective memory . We tell you four things to keep in mind to better remember what you have to do (or have others do it):
• Give importance to what needs to be remembered. According to an article published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, motivation plays an important role in the early stages of prospective memory, as we better remember to do those things that are most important to us because we use more external strategies.
• Try not to do very complex tasks until the moment when you have to remember to run the errand. According to Harrison and his team (2013), if we deal with very complex divided attention tasks that require a lot of concentration and resources, it will cost us more to recover instruction spontaneously.
• Get enough sleep. A study recently published in PLOS One (2013) points out that sleep improves our prospective memory up to two days after instruction, in two ways: we better remember the fact that there is something to do, and also the specific task to be done .
• Train working memory. Laskowska and his collaborators (2013) have designed a game that aims to work prospective memory in a new way, although according to the authors, its effectiveness has not yet been proven. Until that day arrives, we can try to train working memory, another type of cognitive process that seems to play an important role when it comes to remembering our future plans (Wang et al., 2013).
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
