Objective and subjective prospective memory in patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis

Abstract

Introduction: prospective memory is the ability to remember actions in the future or remember delayed intentions. Objective: to study the relationship between prospective memory complaints with an objective measure of prospective memory and affective- motional variables such as depression and anxiety. Subjects and Materials: 51 patients with multiple sclerosis relapsing-remitting and 46 participants in the control group were evaluated with a prospective memory task called El Condor, a questionnaire on subjective complaints of prospective memory, a depression inventory and an anxiety inventory. Results: the control group performed better in El Condor than patients with multiple sclerosis, t = 6263, df = 95, p = 0.000. The prospective memory questionnaire correlated with the depression and the anxiety inventories, p <.05, but not with El Condor. Conclusions: subjective prospective memory is associated with depression and anxiety and not with the objective prospective memory in a group of multiple sclerosis patients. The results indicate that the subjective and objective prospective memory must be studied as separate entities or different phenomena.