Prospective Memory in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

An important cognitive function is the ability to remember to execute future tasks, a capability known as prospective memory (PM). Workers in complex sociotechnical systems such as healthcare and aviation face many PM challenges and forgetting tasks can have severe consequences. Although researchers have made progress in understanding how individuals remember future tasks, system-level support for PM has seldom been addressed. In the present paper, we briefly review PM research in healthcare and aviation, focusing on naturalistic studies using expert workers, and we present the concept of distributed prospective memory, which incorporates the interaction between the environment and the individual when future tasks must be remembered. PM in sociotechnical settings is a complex process involving human and nonhuman agents. Therefore, a systems approach is needed to fully understand PM processes, thus supporting workers and eventually minimizing errors and increasing safety.