Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember intended actions and execute them at a specific time point (time-based PM) or in response to a specific event (event-based PM) in the future (for an overview, see Bayen et al., 2024). PM is pivotal for goal-directed behavior in everyday life, and everyday errors frequently involve PM failures (Crovitz & Daniel, 1984; Kvavilashvili et al., 2001; Terry, 1988). Over the past decades, PM research has evolved into a broad field encompassing laboratory paradigms, naturalistic studies, neurophysiological studies and metacognitive and cognitive modeling approaches. Despite this progress, many of the key questions remain unanswered about the mechanisms supporting PM across different contexts, time frames, and age groups. 
This symposium brings together recent advances from diverse domains of PM research. The first talk focuses on the functional neuroanatomy of event-based and time-based PM in healthy older adults. The second talk examines age differences in metacognitive monitoring and control processes in PM, focusing on how these mechanisms support the management of intentions across adulthood. The third talk focuses on a metacognitive path model of time-based PM, tested empirically on multiple datasets. The fourth talk introduces a novel bi-factor modeling approach that separates bottom-up spontaneous retrieval from top-down preparatory processes in event-based PM. Finally, the fifth talk introduces a new cognitive model that disentangles the prospective component—remembering that something must be done—and the retrospective components of event-based PM, namely remembering what must be done and when. Together, this symposium provides an integrative perspective on current theoretical and methodological developments in PM research and concludes with a discussion of challenges in measuring PM performance and promising directions for future work.