What is the relationship between stress and prospective memory in everyday environments?

Prospective memory (PM) – remembering to perform future intentions (Rummel et al., 2023, Prospective memories in the wild: Predicting memory for intentions in natural environments. Memory & Cognition, 51(5), 1061–1075. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-022-01379-y) – is essential for maintaining daily functioning and fulfilling important obligations (e.g., taking medication). Yet, various factors can lead to PM failures. Stress – the body’s physiological response to a difficult situation/event (Stewart & McFarland, 2020, An investigation of the relations between stress and prospective memory. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 32(2), 131–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2020.1724116) – may be one such factor. Extant research into the stress–PM relationship is limited and yields ambiguous findings, primarily due to poor PM measurement validity. Therefore, our study aimed to examine whether acute and/or chronic stress (measured via stress response and stressor exposure) impair PM performance in everyday environments, using a predominately university-based sample. We developed a novel, ecologically valid paradigm – based on Actual Week (Rendell & Craik, 2000, Virtual week and actual week: Age-related differences in prospective memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 14(7), S43–S62. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.770) – where participants performed a variety of researcher-assigned PM tasks over a four-day period. Overall, acute stress (i.e., our short-term stress indices, aggregated over four-evenings) did not correlate with PM performance, but chronic stressor exposure negatively correlated with PM performance; albeit with a small effect. Additionally, all stress measures were associated with impaired self-reported PM, suggesting that actual PM performance and perceived PM ratings show modest overlap, and likely tap into partially distinct aspects of PM. Our findings highlight the need for more accurate approaches of evaluating stress and PM in everyday life.