Prospective memory predicts the level of community living skills in schizophrenia Raymond W.C. Au a,b,n , David Man c , Yu-Tao Xiang d,e , David Shum f , Edwin Lee g , Gabor S. Ungvari h,i , Wai-Kwong Tang b a Occupational Therapy Department, United Christian Hospital, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region b Department of Psychiatry, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region c Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region d Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau e Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China f School of Applied Psychology and Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia g Department of Psychiatry, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region h University of Notre Dame Australia/Marian Centre, Perth, Australia i School of Psychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia article info Article history: Received 3 September 2013 Received in revised form 8 April 2014 Accepted 29 April 2014 Keywords: Schizophrenia Prospective memory Retrospective memory Community living skills abstract Schizophrenia patients are known to have prospective memory (PM) deficits. There is no robust evidence showing that PM deficits have a major impact on community living skills in schizophrenia. The aim of this study was to examine the association between PM and community living skills in schizophrenia. Forty-four individuals with schizophrenia formed the study sample. Participants' psychopathology, prospective and retrospective memory, level of intelligence, and community living skills were measured with standardized instruments. In bivariate analyses, community living skills overall but not self-care correlated with PM total and subscales scores. In multivariate analyses, event- based PM was more predictive than time-based PM of the level of community living skills. In conclusion, PM has a significant impact on community living skills in schizophrenia and attention should be paid to this type of memory disturbance in rehabilitation of schizophrenia. & 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Prospective memory (PM) is the memory involved in remem- bering to undertake activities in the future (Einstein and McDaniel, 1990). It is considered to have major implications for activities of daily living, with the successful execution of many tasks in daily life thought to depend on PM (Meacham and Leiman, 1982; Ceci and Bronfenbrenner, 1985; Dobbs and Rule,1987). Examples of PM include remembering to attend appointments, transfer funds between bank accounts, and turn off electrical appliances or gas supply. Ellis and Freeman (2008) conceptualized PM as a five-phase process: encoding of an intention, retention of that intention information, retrieval of the intention, execution of the intention, and evaluation of the outcome. In the encoding phase, an intention of a future action is registered (what to perform) in conjunction with timing (the retrieval criterion: when to perform) and a decision (whether the action is desired). In the retention phase, there is a period of delay during which an ongoing activity unrelated to the intention is taking place. In the retrieval phase, the situation or timing appropriate to the intended action is recognized. In the execution phase, that action is carried out. Finally, in the evaluation phase the action's implementation is assessed and further plans or actions are considered. Two subtypes of PM have been described: time-based (TBPM) and event-based (EBPM) (Einstein and McDaniel, 1990; Marsh and Hicks, 1998; Guynn, 2008). TBPM is defined as remembering to perform an action at a specific time in the future, for example, remembering to attend an appointment next Tuesday afternoon, whereas EBPM refers to remembering to perform an action when an external cue appears, for example, passing on a message when a particular person appears. Schizophrenia patients have been found to exhibit deficits in a wide range of cognitive processes, including learning, memory, and executive functions (Jeste et al., 1996; Heinrichs and Zakzanis, 1998; Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychres Psychiatry Research http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2014.04.055 0165-1781/& 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author at: Occupational Therapy Department, United Christian Hospital, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Tel.: þ852 35134786; fax: 852 35135544. E-mail address: raymondau@hotmail.com (R.W.C. Au). Please cite this article as: Au, R.W.C., et al., Prospective memory predicts the level of community living skills in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2014.04.055i Psychiatry Research ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎