title: Prospective memory in multiple sclerosis: The impact of cue distinctiveness and executive functioning.
abstract: Prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to do something at the appropriate time in the future, is crucial in everyday life. One way to improve PM performance is to increase the salience of a cue announcing that it is time to act. Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients often report PM failures and there is growing evidence of PM deficits among this population. However, such deficits are poorly characterized and their relation to cognitive status remains unclear. To better understand PM deficits in MS patients, this study investigated the impact of cue salience on PM, and its relation to retrospective memory (RM) and executive deficits.
  
  
  
  Thirty-nine (39) MS patients were compared to 18 healthy controls on a PM task modulating cue salience during an ongoing general knowledge test.
  
  
  
  MS patients performed worse than controls on the PM task, regardless of cue salience. MS patients' executive functions contributed significantly to the variance in PM performance, whereas age, education and RM did not. Interestingly, low- and high-executive patients' performance differed when the cue was not salient, but not when it was, suggesting that low-executive MS patients benefited more from cue salience.
  
  
  
  These findings add to the growing evidence of PM deficits in MS and highlight the contribution of executive functions to certain aspects of PM. In low-executive MS patients, high cue salience improves PM performance by reducing the detection threshold and need for environmental monitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Emmanuelle
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dagenais
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada; Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal CHUM, Canada. Electronic address: rouleau.isabelle@uqam.ca.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Rouleau
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tremblay
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Mélanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Demers
authors.affiliation: Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal CHUM, Canada.
authors.forename: Élaine
authors.initials: É
authors.lastname: Roger
authors.affiliation: Neurology Service, Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur de Montréal, Canada.
authors.forename: Céline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jobin
authors.affiliation: Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal CHUM, Canada.
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Duquette
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D060825:Cognitive Dysfunction / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003463:Cues; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000209:etiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008875:Middle Aged; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*
keywords: Cognitive impairment; Cue salience; Episodic memory; Executive functions; Multiple sclerosis; Prospective memory