Younger and older adults’ prospective memory: the role of delay task difficulty

ABSTRACT

There is mixed evidence on the impact of delay task difficulty on prospective memory (PM) performance and little research has examined this among older adults. The present study examined younger (N = 60) and older (N = 57) adults’ prospective memory (PM) performance after completing an easy or difficult Raven’s matrices task. To assess whether delay difficulty impacted how often participants thought about their PM intention, participants were asked to report on what they thought about during the delay task itself and retrospectively after all tasks were completed. Younger adults outperformed older adults on the PM task; however, delay task difficulty had no impact PM for either age group. Reports of thinking about the intention during the delay task differed by age group depending whether they were online or retrospective, however, overall greater reports of thinking about the intention was positively associated with PM performance.     

Measuring memory monitoring with judgements of retention (JORs)

Most prior research has examined predictions of future memory performance by eliciting judgements of learning (JOLs). In six experiments, we explored monitoring with an alternative prospective measure. Specifically, participants made judgements of retention (JORs) predicting how long (in min) they would be able to remember information. Results revealed that participants provided relatively short predictions of how long they would remember information. Further, participants' JORs were sensitive to recall performance as well as manipulations that influenced memory performance indicating that they were able to effectively monitor learning using JORs. JORs influenced study decisions as well, with participants selecting more items for restudy following JORs than following JOLs or no monitoring judgement. However, restudy selection did not vary between a JOR and a JOL condition framed in terms of forgetting. Thus, we suggest that, much like forget-framed JOLs, JORs may bring different information—such as memory failure—to mind. In all, the inferential mechanisms underlying metacognitive monitoring with JOLs extends to monitoring when measured with JORs. Assessing monitoring with JORs provides information not available with JOLs (i.e., memory duration estimates) and a different basis for study decisions from remember-framed JOLs.     

Motivation,depression, and naturalistic time-based prospective remembering

This study investigated the effect of a motivational manipulation on naturalistic time-based prospective memory (PM) task performance. The association between depression and PM task performance was also investigated. First-year psychology students were required to send mobile phone text messages (SMSs) at a specific time 3 days and 6 days after an initial meeting. During the delay period participants recorded details of the retrieval whenever they remembered the SMS task. Participants given the incentive of extra course credit (motivation condition) outperformed their counterparts on the PM tasks, and showed a greater increase in the reported frequency of self-initiated retrievals on target days. Depression was negatively correlated with PM task performance. The findings suggest that motivational instructions impact the controlled processes underlying PM.     

Performance predictions affect attentional processes of event-based prospective memory

To investigate whether making performance predictions affects prospective memory (PM) processing, we asked one group of participants to predict their performance in a PM task embedded in an ongoing task and compared their performance with a control group that made no predictions. A third group gave not only PM predictions but also ongoing-task predictions. Exclusive PM predictions resulted in slower ongoing-task responding both in a nonfocal (Experiment 1) and in a focal (Experiment 2) PM task. Only in the nonfocal task was the additional slowing accompanied by improved PM performance. Even in the nonfocal task, however, was the correlation between ongoing-task speed and PM performance reduced after predictions, suggesting that the slowing was not completely functional for PM. Prediction-induced changes could be avoided by asking participants to additionally predict their performance in the ongoing task. In sum, the present findings substantiate a role of metamemory for attention-allocation strategies of PM.     

Measuring memory monitoring with judgements of retention (JORs)

Most prior research has examined predictions of future memory performance by eliciting judgements of learning (JOLs). In six experiments, we explored monitoring with an alternative prospective measure. Specifically, participants made judgements of retention (JORs) predicting how long (in min) they would be able to remember information. Results revealed that participants provided relatively short predictions of how long they would remember information. Further, participants' JORs were sensitive to recall performance as well as manipulations that influenced memory performance indicating that they were able to effectively monitor learning using JORs. JORs influenced study decisions as well, with participants selecting more items for restudy following JORs than following JOLs or no monitoring judgement. However, restudy selection did not vary between a JOR and a JOL condition framed in terms of forgetting. Thus, we suggest that, much like forget-framed JOLs, JORs may bring different information-such as memory failure-to mind. In all, the inferential mechanisms underlying metacognitive monitoring with JOLs extends to monitoring when measured with JORs. Assessing monitoring with JORs provides information not available with JOLs (i.e., memory duration estimates) and a different basis for study decisions from remember-framed JOLs.     

The first signs of prospective memory

We conducted a study to examine the impact of motivation and length of delay on performance on prospective memory (PM) tasks in 2-year of children. A total of 158 children aged exactly 24 months were asked to perform a naturalistic PM task. Length of delay (10?min; 35?min) and motivation (high; very high) were between-subjects factors. Two thirds of children had to be excluded from the analysis because of poor retrospective memory for the PM task instructions which were no longer remembered at the end of the session. For the children who did remember the instructions, both motivation and delay had significant effects on PM. Also, their PM performance was reliably above zero, even after the long delay. The findings indicate that when children as young as 24 months are able to remember the PM task instructions they can reliably succeed in PM tasks that are intrinsically motivating for them.     

Using the past to predict the future

This research addressed three issues. First, we examined whether retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs) and judgments of learning (JOLs) assess memory differently. Second, we examined the relative accuracy of JOLs and RCJs at predicting future recall performance. Third, we examined whether making JOLs improves subsequent recall better than making RCJs or making no metacognitive judgment. Results suggest that RCJs and JOLs are both based on retrievability, but that participants use their memory differently when making JOLs. RCJs were more accurate than JOLs at predicting future recall for some subsets of items, but the reverse was true for other subsets of items. Finally, eventual recall performance was facilitated when participants made JOLs but not when they made RCJs, suggesting that the JOL task helps to improve people's learning of the items.     

What factors influence prospective memory for elderly people in a naturalistic setting?1

Previous studies comparing prospective memory between the elderly and young adults have shown that elderly adults perform better in naturalistic settings, while young adults perform better in laboratory settings. The purpose of this study was to examine what factors influence prospective memory in naturalistic settings, and we specifically focused on age, the complexity of the prospective memory task, self‐evaluation and knowledge of memory function, retrospective memory, external memory aids, and internal memory strategies as potential influential factors. Eighty‐six healthy, elderly participants were enrolled (44 women and 42 men, mean age = 68.56 years, SD = 4.53). The results showed that the use of external memory aids increased in complex prospective memory tasks that depended on output monitoring, while other factors did not influence prospective memory performance. These results suggest that elderly adults can perform tasks adequately by using external memory aids that compensate for age‐related memory declines in naturalistic settings.     

The influence of high and low cue–action association on prospective memory performance

Recent discoveries in the field of prospective memory (PM) show higher accuracy for remembering intentions in which prospective cue and action are strongly associated. In two experiments presented in this paper, participants encoded both high and low association cue–action pairs and were later tested on both prospective and retrospective PM components. Results of both studies show higher PM accuracy for the low association pairs, compared to high association ones, but only for the prospective component (across both Experiments) and only when a high association cue was presented first (Experiment 2). This finding was accompanied by longer study times for the low association pairs and study times were functionally related to later performance (across both Experiments). In the retrospective component, higher accuracy was observed for pairs with high level of association (but only in the first Experiment). Data are discussed in the context of metacognitive processes possibly related to the encoding of an intention as well as cue monitoring in case of PM tasks with high memory load and varying task difficulty.     

Growth curve models in retrospective memory and prospective memory: the relationship between prediction and performance with task experience

Older adults commonly experience declines in episodic memory that affect their daily lives. The aim was to examine whether the acquired metacognitive awareness that comes with task experience, indexed by meta-retrospective memory (meta-RM)/meta-prospective memory (meta-PM), influences how older adults predict performance on later trials. Participants were 178 community-dwelling older adults. RM performance and predictions were measured using a multi-trial word-list learning task. Predictions and performance for PM were measured using a PM paradigm. Change in RM/PM performance and predictions over the trials/blocks were modelled using latent growth curve analyses. For RM, both predictions and performance increased with task experience. However, for PM, neither performance nor predictions changed with task experience. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed that metacognitive awareness acquired during the RM and PM tasks influenced how older adults’ modified their predictions of subsequent task performance. Findings are consistent with [Toglia and Kirk’s (2000). Understanding awareness deficits following brain injury. NeuroRehabilitation, 15(1), 57–70] hypothesis that individuals compare ongoing performance to expectations based on metacognitive knowledge, such that a discrepancy between actual and expected performance may influence emergent awareness.     

Metacognitive monitoring during criterion learning: When and why are judgments accurate?

Research on metacognitive judgment accuracy during retrieval practice has increased in recent years. However, prior work had not systematically evaluated item-level judgment accuracy and the underlying bases of judgment accuracy in a criterion-learning paradigm (in which items are practiced until correctly recalled during encoding). Understanding these relationships during criterion learning has important theoretical implications for self-regulated learning frameworks, and also has applied implications for student learning: If the factors that influence metacognitive judgments are not predictive of subsequent test performance, students may make poor decisions during self-regulated learning. In the present experiments, participants engaged in test–restudy practice until items were recalled correctly. Once a given item reached criterion, participants made an immediate or delayed judgment of learning (JOL) for the item. A final cued-recall test occurred 30 min later. We examined judgment accuracy (the relationship between JOLs and test performance) and the underlying bases of judgment accuracy by evaluating cue utilization (the relationship between cues and JOLs) and cue diagnosticity (the relationship between cues and test performance). Immediate JOLs were only modestly related to subsequent test performance, and further analyses revealed that the cues related to JOLs were only weakly predictive of test accuracy. However, delaying JOLs improved both the accuracy of the JOLs and the diagnosticity of the cues that influenced judgments.     

Prospective memory performance across adolescence

In the present study, the authors explored age differences in event-based prospective memory (PM) across adolescence. The tasks consisted of an ongoing task (OT; i.e., personality questionnaire items, math problems) and an embedded prospective task that required participants to remember to make a special response whenever they encountered a PM cue (i.e., a negative word in the OT). The 341 participants (aged 13-22 years) revealed a significant main effect of age, which indicated better PM performance of young adults compared with teenagers. Moreover, when emphasizing the OT versus the PM task, teenagers' PM profited from PM emphasis more than did young adults' PM. The authors discuss the data in the context of limited executive capacity as a factor influencing cognitive development across adolescence.     

Dismantling the “age–prospective memory paradox”: The classic laboratory paradigm simulated in a naturalistic setting

Previous research has identified “the age–prospective memory paradox”—that adult ageing results in reliably poorer performance on laboratory-based tasks of prospective memory (PM), but improved performance on such tasks carried out in real-life settings. We hypothesized that even in their everyday environment, older adults might be worse at PM tasks that are triggered during an experimenter-generated ongoing activity. The present study used a task that captured the key features of the classic laboratory paradigm, but which was completed in a setting that met key criteria to be considered naturalistic. In their everyday setting, participants' PM was assessed, with the cue to remember occurring either (a) during their day-to-day activities, or (b) during an experimenter-generated ongoing task. The results confirmed previous naturalistic findings, in showing that older adults (n = 28) exhibited better PM than their younger counterparts (n = 65) when prompted during their everyday activities. However, older adults were also then subsequently less likely to show effective PM during experimenter-generated ongoing activity. Reproducing the paradox within a single dataset, these data indicate that older adults can effectively act on intentions during everyday activities, but have difficulty in prospective remembering during experimenter-generated ongoing tasks.     

The effect of perceptual distinctiveness on the prospective and retrospective components of prospective memory in young and old adults.

In two experiments, the effect of perceptual distinctiveness of cues on prospective memory performance was examined. Young and older adults completed a visual search task with embedded prospective memory instructions. On each trial, participants were asked to indicate the position of a target letter in a letter string, unless either of two letters previously identified as prospective memory cues was presented. Each prospective cue was associated with a specific response. Perceptual distinctiveness was manipulated by spatially displacing a single letter. The prospective component (successful detection of the cue) and the retrospective memory component (recalling the correct response when a cue is detected) were measured separately. Perceptual displacement of cues modulated performance of the prospective component but not the retrospective component. Young adults successfully detected a larger proportion of cues (prospective component) than older adults. However, there were minimal effects of age and no effect of cue displacement on participants' ability to recall the intention once they detected a cue (retrospective component performance). Results are discussed within the context of current theoretical models of prospective memory.     

MPT模型在事件性前瞻记忆研究中的应用

前瞻性记忆是指对将要进行的活动或事件的记忆。前瞻记忆中,包含了前瞻成分和回溯成分。前人研究中,缺乏对前瞻成分和回溯成分有效的分离手段,使得对前瞻记忆机制的探讨缺乏深入挖掘。本文将MPT模型与Cohen等人的研究范式对比,分析了该模型在事件性前瞻记忆研究中的优势。文章对模型的理论基础,模型的主要内容,模型的数据计算方法,模型的效度以及模型的应用等几个方面进行了介绍,同时对模型使用中需要注意的问题进行了讨论。     

How did I remember to do that? Self-reported strategy use for laboratory prospective memory tasks

ABSTRACT

The role of metacognition in prospective memory (PM) has received relatively little attention. This study combined data from several experiments to identify the strategy repertoire employed during a classic laboratory PM task and to determine whether self-reported strategy was related to performance. Participants (N?=?668) completed either a focal or nonfocal PM task embedded in an ongoing lexical decision task. The results indicated that participants reported the same strategy repertoire regardless of PM task focality. Participants who reported using a strategy performed better than those who did not report using one, and this was especially true under nonfocal conditions. Self-reported strategy use was also associated with more cost to the ongoing task when the opportunity to complete the PM task was present. These findings add to what is known about the metacognitive components of PM and underscore the need for additional research in this area.     

Does episodic future thinking improve prospective remembering?

Extant findings suggest interesting avenues for the investigation of the potential relationship between EFT and PM. However, as they stand, they are inconclusive as to the causal role that EFT may play in aiding prospective remembering. In one Experiment, we showed that accuracy in a prospective memory (PM) task performed on the second day was significantly higher when participants, on the first day, had mentally simulated the sequence of events expected to occur on the second day, including the PM task, than when they had performed control tasks. These data extend previous findings on the functional benefit of future simulations in different domains by revealing a substantial facilitation effect of future-oriented thoughts on PM performance when the mentally simulated future task matched the actually executed task.     

The contributions of anchoring and past-test performance to the underconfidence-with-practice effect

In the underconfidence-with-practice effect, people's judgments of learning (JOLs) typically underestimate memory performance across multiple study-test phases. Whereas the past-test hypothesis suggests that this underconfidence stems from participants' reliance on earlier test performance to make subsequent JOLs (despite new learning), the anchoring hypothesis suggests that the underconfidence stems from participants' reliance on a fixed psychological anchor point low on the JOL scale to make their JOLs. To contrast the predictions of these hypotheses, we had college students study, make JOLs, and test over several dozen paired-associate items across two study-test phases. We parametrically manipulated the presence or absence of testing and judging within participants during Phase 1. Contrary to the past-test hypothesis, items tested during Phase 1 demonstrated less underconfidence during Phase 2 than did nontested items. Furthermore, participants did not increase JOLs from Phase 1 to Phase 2 for items that they had not recalled or for items that had not been tested at all, suggesting that the underconfidence stemmed largely from participants' overreliance on a psychological anchor point to make their JOLs. Past test performance, however, seems to be a major cue that participants use to adjust their JOLs away from the anchor, reducing underconfidence. This was most evident when we used a between-participants manipulation (Exp. 2) to cause our participants to anchor their JOLs either high or low on the JOL scale, producing differential underconfidence independent of any adjustment. Taken together, these results support the anchoring hypothesis over the past-test hypothesis for explaining underconfidence with practice.     

A meta-analytic review of prospective memory and aging

A meta-analysis of prospective memory (PM) studies revealed that in laboratory settings younger participants outperform older participants on tests of both time- and event-based PM (rs=-.39 and -.34, respectively). Event-based PM tasks that impose higher levels of controlled strategic demand are associated with significantly larger age effects than event-based PM tasks that are supported by relatively more automatic processes (rs=-.40 vs. -.14, respectively). However, contrary to the prevailing view in the literature, retrospective memory as measured by free recall is associated with significantly greater age-related decline (r=-.52) than PM, and older participants perform substantially better than their younger counterparts in naturalistic PM studies (rs=.35 and.52 for event- and time-based PM, respectively).     

前瞻记忆年老化研究的自然情境和实验室情境比较

年龄—前瞻记忆矛盾现象在实验室情境和自然情境研究中普遍存在。当任务设置为日常情境时, 前瞻记忆不受年龄影响或随年龄增长而促进, 前瞻记忆成绩可能受人格、生活方式、任务材料、提示等因素的影响; 当任务是实验室情境设置时, 与年轻被试相比, 老年被试前瞻记忆成绩一般都较差, 前瞻记忆成绩可能受回溯记忆负载、线索类型和策略控制加工的需求等因素的影响。年龄-前瞻记忆矛盾现象可能来自于环境与意向的社会性特征、认知资源分配策略等方面的原因。最后, 从被试控制、任务材料的设置、动机因素的探索等方面对今后的研究提出建议和展望。