Prospective memory or PM for short is the form of memory where someone recalls or remembers to perform an action in the future after the task was planned. This happens every day, from going grocery shopping, getting a haircut, or making that one annoying phone call to an insurance company. This paper is meant to look at how drinking effects prospective memory. This is important because drinking is a big cultural norm that can have bad side effects. Humans need their prospective memory to be sharp and healthy. The last thing anyone wants to happen is to forget to do something important. Alcohol in many different amounts does not help when it comes to memory or cognitive thinking in general and this is the case with prospective memory
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The reason humans use things such as alarms and timers is so that we do not have to strain and use PM. There is an encoding process and then a retrieval process. Studies have pointed to PM using the rostral prefrontal cortex for the time in between remembering and then preforming the action. This is bad for underage and newly allowed drinkers because the prefrontal cortex does not fully mature until around age twenty-five. Therefore, while drinking this area of the brain is quite vulnerable to any harm the alcohol might do to the brain. As said in Effects of Drinking Patterns on Prospective Memory Performance in College Students, “Adolescents with alcohol use disorder (AUD) demonstrate smaller prefrontal cortex volumes…” This shows how alcohol consumed in dangerous amounts can negatively affect a person’s …show more content…
A goodness-of-fit test showed a big difference in gender distribution from group to group. The results showed fewer women (20%) than men (40%) were categorized as heavy drinkers. However, there were no big differences in ethnic, racial, or age distribution. “An unexpected finding was that participants overall performed better on the time- than the event-based PM tasks.” It was surprising to see that superior performances on event-based PM task without effects on time-based PM tasks were linked to alcohol consumption. The problem with time based tasks are that the participant has to remember to perform over time rather than perform on the spot which is much more difficult. Drinking behavior was related to impaired time-based PM performance and the heavier the drinker the worse the performance
The reason humans use things such as alarms and timers is so that we do not have to strain and use PM. There is an encoding process and then a retrieval process. Studies have pointed to PM using the rostral prefrontal cortex for the time in between remembering and then preforming the action. This is bad for underage and newly allowed drinkers because the prefrontal cortex does not fully mature until around age twenty-five. Therefore, while drinking this area of the brain is quite vulnerable to any harm the alcohol might do to the brain. As said in Effects of Drinking Patterns on Prospective Memory Performance in College Students, “Adolescents with alcohol use disorder (AUD) demonstrate smaller prefrontal cortex volumes…” This shows how alcohol consumed in dangerous amounts can negatively affect a person’s …show more content…
A goodness-of-fit test showed a big difference in gender distribution from group to group. The results showed fewer women (20%) than men (40%) were categorized as heavy drinkers. However, there were no big differences in ethnic, racial, or age distribution. “An unexpected finding was that participants overall performed better on the time- than the event-based PM tasks.” It was surprising to see that superior performances on event-based PM task without effects on time-based PM tasks were linked to alcohol consumption. The problem with time based tasks are that the participant has to remember to perform over time rather than perform on the spot which is much more difficult. Drinking behavior was related to impaired time-based PM performance and the heavier the drinker the worse the performance