Remember to stay positive: Affect and prospective memory in everyday life

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the affect-cognition interplay in young and older adults by studying prospective memory (PM), the realisation of delayed intentions. While most previous studies on the topic were conducted in the laboratory, we examined the influence of naturally occurring affect on PM tasks carried out in participants' everyday lives. For seven consecutive days, participants were asked to rate their affective state nine times per day and send text messages either at specific times (time-based PM) or when a particular event occurred (event-based PM). Resultsshowed that within-participants changes in valence from more positive to more negative affect were associated with decreased PM performance. This was similarly true for young and older adults. The design used allowed linkage of within-participants fluctuations of affect and cognitive functions, constituting a methodological advancement. Results suggest that positive affect has the potential to improve cognitive functioning in everyday life.

Daily Affect and Daily Prospective Memory in People after Stroke and Their Partners: The Moderating Role of Resting Heart Rate

“…Our findings are in line with the results of an ambulatory assessment study in young and older adults, which showed that more daily negative affect was associated with worse daily event-based and time-based prospective memory performance [7]. Our findings are also in line with an ambulatory assessment study on working memory, which showed higher high-arousal negative affect (i.e., nervousness) to be associated with lower working memory performance at the same moment in middle-and older aged adults [21].…”

“…This study was an initial attempt to examine affect in daily life, but its focus on a sporting context constrains its generalizability. Recently, a 7-day ambulatory assessment study invited young and older adults, nine times per day, to report their affect and complete an event-based prospective memory task (i.e., replying to text messages that had a word in upper case) and a time-based prospective memory task (i.e., sending text messages at predefined times) [7]. Results indicated that naturally occurring positive (vs. negative) affect was associated with better daily performance in both event-based and time-based prospective memory tasks.…”

“…We did not find significant associations between prospective memory performance and high-or lowarousal positive affect and low-arousal negative affect. A past everyday life study indicated that positive affect was associated with better performance in event-and time-based prospective memory tasks in young and older adults [7], although it did not separately examine event-versus time-based performance. This nonsignificant finding might be because we only examined eventbased performance and did not include time-based Association between daily higharousal negative affect and daily prospective memory performance by RHR.…”

“…Past research indicates that fluctuations in day-to-day affect are associated with performance in prospective memory assessed in real life [7]. Affect refers to the most elementary consciously accessible feelings, which includes a sense of pleasure or displeasure and tension or relaxation [8].…”

“…Thus, this model predicts that if individuals experience negative or positive affect, they should perform worse in ongoing cognitive tasks than when they are in a neutral condition. Second, a motivational perspective has been used to explain why positive affect benefits prospective memory performance [7, 10]. That is, positive affect might go along with a higher motivation to perform well on prospective memory tasks, which is then reflected as better measured performance.…”