Prospective memory impairment is clinically evident and functionally relevant in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It is a psychological construct different from episodic memory by its additional prospective component that distinctively relies on self-initiative controlled process. However, research of prospective memory in AD is relatively limited. Currently, the shortage of economic measuring methods makes the assessment of prospective memory unfeasible to be a clinical routine. The cognitive elements responsible for prospective memory disruption, especially metacognitive monitoring, also have not been thoroughly investigated, yielding the design of behavioral intervention less grounded.
We thus conducted four serial studies to demonstrate the clinical utility of prospective memory measurements in early detection and differential diagnosis for patients with memory concerns, and further investigated the role of metacognitive control in prospective memory in patients precursory to AD. Given that the interplay of basic and metacognitive memory processes has been well-illustrated in theoretical models, and that prospective memory and metamemory may share overlapping neural substrates in the frontotemporal circuits, theoretical and clinical implications based on the present results will be discussed.