Physical activity and prospective memory in emerging adulthood: the moderating role of sleep

Health behaviors including sleep and physical activity (PA) aid in facilitating optimal functioning for cognition important for everyday life in college aged individuals, including executive functions (EF) and memory. Prospective Memory (PM), or remembering to complete an action at a future time may also be implicated by both of these health behaviors given that EF and memory underpin PM (McDaniel & Einstein, 2007). However, college students typically sacrifice sleep and PA which may result in deficits in PM (Dietrch et al., 2016). This is important given that repeated errors in PM may affect students’ ability to achieve post-college career goals. Research indicates a relationship between PA and EF, although similar results for PA and PM have not been found, which is surprising given the role of EF in this cognitive process. The current study aimed to assess this relationship further by suggesting that a third construct, sleep, may moderate the relationship between PA and PM. Subjective self-report measures of PA, PM, and sleep were used to examine this relationship. In addition, given the significant role of EF in PM, measures of EF were controlled for in analyses. Four moderation analyses examining sleep quantity and quality as a moderator for the relationship between PA and time and event-based PM did not support hypotheses and revealed non-significant results. These findings may be explained by the study’s small sample size and disproportionate distribution of males and females who exhibited significant differences on PA levels. Additionally, young adults generally perform worse on naturalistic PM tasks. The self-report PM measure used in the current study included several statements about PM in a naturalistic setting and thus may explain a lack of high PM performance. Taken together, the current study highlights the need for additional research surrounding this relationship as minimal literature exists.