Mindfulness meditation can improve both focal and non-focal prospective memory performance

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember a delayed intention to perform in a specific future situation. According to the extent to which PM cues overlap with ongoing task processing, PM can be divided into focal PM and non-focal PM. Mindfulness meditation includes focused attention (FA) meditation and open monitoring (OM) meditation. The present study was conducted with 81 participants, using a 3 (group: FA, OM, control group) × 2 (focality: focal, non-focal) design to investigate the effects of FA meditation and OM meditation on PM with focal and non-focal cues. The results showed that there was no difference in the facilitative effects of FA and OM on PM with focal and non-focal cues. Meanwhile, both types of mindfulness meditation improved PM performance by enhancing cue monitoring. The results of this study confirmed the views of preparatory attention processing and memory processing theory. This study has been registered and the registration number is ChiCTR2400094091.