Successful prospective memory (PM) performance is crucial

to meet everyday social, occupational, and health-related

demands (Kliegel, J�ger, Altgassen, & Shum, 2008). PM
refers to the execution of delayed intentions at a certain time
(time-based tasks) or event (event-based tasks; Einstein &
McDaniel, 1996). Typical everyday examples of PM tasks
are remembering to submit assignments on time or to pass a
message to a friend when you see him next. Given the known
deficits of individuals with ADHD with organizing and
coordinating everyday activities, it is somewhat surprising
that so far only four studies investigated PM in children and
adults with ADHD (Altgassen, Kretschmer, & Kliegel,
2014; Brandimonte, Filippello, Coluccia, Altgassen, &
Kliegel, 2011; Kerns & Price, 2001; Zinke et al., 2010).

Kerns and Price (2001) presented children with ADHD with

an event-based and a time-based task. For the event-based
task, children were required to perform predefined activities
during the course of the experiment (i.e., remembering to get
up, go to the door and turn the doorknob when the experimenter snapped their
fingers). Children with ADHD performed as well as controls. For the time-based PM
task,
children had to drive a car on a busy street (in a computer
game) and remember to fuel the car at predefined times.
Participants could monitor the remaining filling level by
pressing a certain key. In comparison with controls, children
with ADHD showed fewer correct time-based PM responses,
while the total number of gas checks did not differ between
groups. Using a standard experimental paradigm, Zinke
et al. (2010) explored time-based PM performance in children with ADHD. Children
were engaged in a one-back task
and had to remember to press a specific button whenever 2
minutes had passed. Again, time-based PM performance
was reduced in children with ADHD. Interestingly, groups
did not differ in overall ongoing task performance or overall
frequency and accuracy of time-monitoring. Brandimonte
and colleagues (2011) explored event-based PM and
response inhibition in children with autism and children with
ADHD. Children worked on a categorization (ongoing) task
and, simultaneously, either on an event-based PM (i.e.,
remembering to press a predefined button when one of two
PM target cues was presented) or on a Go-/NoGo task (i.e.,
remembering not to press any buttons when one of two target items was presented).
In comparison with matched controls, children with autism performed poorer in the
PM task,
while no group differences were observed in the Go-/NoGo
task. In contrast, the opposite pattern of performance was
reported for ADHD. Children with ADHD were as good as
controls in the PM task, but showed reduced performance in
the Go-/NoGo task. Altgassen and colleagues (2014) investigated both time- and
event-based PM within one paradigm
using parallel task constraints in the same sample of adults
with ADHD. In line with previous research, a large-sized
impairment was observed in adults with ADHD for timebased PM, while event-based PM
was spared. Hence, taken
together empirical evidence points to a task dissociation
across PM task types in ADHD.

In terms of possible explanations for this dissociation, so

far authors have mainly argued that, typically, time-based PM
tasks are more demanding than event-based PM tasks and put
higher demands on monitoring, inhibitory, and working memory load. Given that no
external cue may prompt retrieval of
the intended action, the individual needs to frequently inhibit
performing the ongoing task to monitor the elapsing time and
to keep the elapsed time in mind not to miss the target time
(Einstein & McDaniel, 1996).

Given that time-monitoring is

considered the key marker for resource allocation in a timebased PM task (Kliegel,
Martin, McDaniel, & Einstein, 2001),
those results challenge the simple resource load explanation
for the observed findings. Specifying this account, we recently
suggested that for ADHD not time-monitoring per se, but
rather the necessity to maintain the timing information in
working memory, and/or to inhibit the ongoing task at target
time execution may be potential underlying factors (Zinke
et al., 2010).