Prospective memory after sleep and wakefulness.

<p>(A) A significantly greater percentage of subjects who slept in the night after prospective memory instruction (sleep group) compared to subjects who stayed awake (wake group) retrieved the intention at a retest two days later, i.e., detected at least one cue in the lexical decision task. (B) The percentage of cue-words detected (a measure of the prospective component) differed in sleep and wake groups depending on whether subjects paid full attention to the task or engaged in parallel in a secondary (auditory attention) task. Subjects who slept after instruction of prospective memory were completely unaffected by divided attention, whereas wake subjects were strongly impaired in cue detection specifically during divided attention conditions. (C) The percentage of recalled word associates relative to the number of cues detected (measuring the retrospective component) was higher in sleep compared to wake subjects. Means ± SEM are shown. * <i>p</i> < 0.05, *** <i>p</i> < 0.001.