Studies suggest that sleep benefits event-based prospective memory, which involves carrying out intentions when particular events occur. Prospective memory has a prospective component (remembering that one has an intention), and a retrospective component (remembering when to carry it out). As effects of sleep on retrospective memory are well established, the effect of sleep on prospective memory may thus be due exclusively to an effect of sleep on its retrospective component. Therefore, the authors investigated whether nighttime sleep improves the prospective component of prospective memory, or a retrospective component, or both. In a first session, participants performed an event-based prospective-memory task (that was embedded in an ongoing task) 3 minutes after forming an intention and, in a second session, 12 hours after forming an intention. The sessions were separated by either nighttime sleep or daytime wakefulness. The authors disentangled prospective-memory performance into its retrospective and prospective components via multinomial processing tree modeling. There was no effect of sleep on the retrospective component, which may have been due to a time-of-day effect. The prospective component, which is the component unique to prospective memory, declined less strongly after a retention interval filled with sleep as compared with a retention interval filled with wakefulness. A hybrid interaction suggested that refreshed attention after sleep may account for this effect, but did not support the consolidation of the association between the intention and its appropriate context as a mechanism driving the effect.

研究表明，睡眠有益于基于事件的前瞻性记忆，这涉及在特定事件发生时执行意图。前瞻记忆有一个前瞻成分（记住一个人有一个意图）和一个回顾成分（记住当来执行）。由于睡眠对回顾性记忆的影响已得到充分证实，因此睡眠对前瞻记忆的影响可能完全是由于睡眠对其回顾性成分的影响。因此，作者调查了夜间睡眠是否会改善前瞻性记忆的前瞻性成分，或回顾性成分，或两者兼而有之。在第一次会议中，参与者在形成意图 3 分钟后执行基于事件的前瞻性记忆任务（嵌入正在进行的任务中），在第二次会议中，在形成意图后 12 小时执行。会议由夜间睡眠或白天清醒分开。作者通过多项式处理树建模将前瞻性记忆性能分解为其回顾性和前瞻性组件。睡眠对回顾部分没有影响，这可能是由于一天中的时间效应。与充满清醒的保持间隔相比，在充满睡眠的保持间隔之后，作为前瞻性记忆特有的成分的前瞻性成分下降的幅度较小。混合交互表明，睡眠后注意力恢复可能是这种效应的原因，但不支持将意图与其适当上下文之间的关联巩固为驱动该效应的机制。