Depression-related impairments in prospective memory

Time-based prospective memory, the ability to carry out a future intention at a specified time, was found to be impaired in a community sample of clin ically depressed adults, relative to a nondepressed sample. Nondepressed pa rticipants monitored the time more frequently and, in the final block of th e task, accelerated time-monitoring as the target time for the prospective memory response approached. These results are consistent with previous find ings of depression-related impairments in retrospective memory tasks that r equire controlled, self-initiated processing.