Event-based prospective memory in depression: The impact of cue focality

This study is the first to compare event-based prospective memory performance in individuals with depression and healthy controls. The degree to which self-initiated processing is required to perform the prospective memory task was varied. Twenty-eight individuals with depression and 32 healthy controls worked on a computerized prospective memory task. Prospective cues were either presented focally or nonfocally to the ongoing activity. Collapsing data across both conditions, controls outperformed individuals with depression in the prospective memory task. Overall, participants showed a poorer prospective memory performance in the nonfocal condition that required self-initiated processing to a higher degree than the focal condition. Importantly, as revealed by a group by task condition interaction, groups did not differ in the focal condition, whereas, controls outperformed individuals with depression in the nonfocal condition. The results are in line with the multiprocess framework of event-based prospective remembering and the cognitive-initiative account of depression-related cognitive deficits.