The goal of this review paper is to elucidate prospective memory (PM) mechanisms by identifying the roles of inhibition. Recently, inhibitory functions in PM have become of interest, but little is known about them. Previous studies examining the relationship between PM and inhibition can be broken into two categories: (1) studies that have examined the relationship using analyses based on the correlation of scores in related tasks and (2) studies that have employed experimental manipulations and have focused on inhibition that actually functioned in the PM remembering process. In reviewing these studies, we have found that both response inhibition and representation inhibition are involved in PM. Based on these results, we suggest that PM involves two control processes and that the separate inhibitory mechanisms apply to each of the control processes. This cognitive psychological hypothesis is supported by neuroscience studies. Finally, we argue that this distinction in the roles of inhibition is important for the development of PM theory.
