Sometimes they show, sometimes they don't: Appointment attendance as a naturalistic prospective memory task

Prospective memory (PM) refers to our ability to remember to complete future actions. One common everyday PM task that requires further attention is our ability to remember to attend scheduled appointments. The present study focused on appointment attendance as a naturalistic time-based PM task and examined metacognitive factors associated with appointment keeping. We specifically measured self-reported strategy use, perceived task importance, and everyday forgetting among individuals who successfully attended (Show) or failed to attend (No-Show) a research appointment. Consistent with previous research, No-Show participants often reported that they had simply forgotten to attend their scheduled appointment. Show participants were more likely to use strategies, particularly technology-based strategies, compared to No-Show participants. Furthermore, using a strategy improved the likelihood of attendance even if participants viewed attendance as less important or perceived themselves to have poor PM. Implications for improving appointment attendance and PM in daily life are discussed.