Age effects in emotional prospective memory: Cue valence differentially affects the prospective and retrospective component. (original) (raw)
Effect of age on event-based and time-based prospective memory
Psychology and Aging, 1997
The magnitude of age differences on event-and time-based prospective memory tasks was investigated in 2 experiments. Participants performed a working memory task and were also required to perform either an event-or time-based prospective action. Control participants performed either the working memory task only or the prospective memory task only. Results yielded age differences on both prospective tasks. The age effect was particularly marked on the time-based task. Performance of the event-based prospective task, however, had a higher cost to performance on the concurrent working memory task than the time-based task did, suggesting that event-based responding has a substantial attentional requirement. The older adults also made a significant number of time-monitoring errors when time monitoring was their sole task. This suggests that some time-based prospective memory deficits in older adults are due to a fundamental deficit in time monitoring rather than to prospective memory.
Psychology and Aging, 2013
The present meta-analysis investigated whether event-based prospective memory (PM) age effects differ by task order specificity. In specified PM tasks, the order of the ongoing and the PM task response is predetermined, which imposes demands on cognitive control to navigate the possible response options. In contrast, unspecified PM tasks do not require responding in a particular order. Based on 57 studies and more than 5,500 younger and older adults, results showed larger PM age effects in specified compared with unspecified PM tasks. Additionally, the effect of task focality on age differences was replicated. Results suggest that both pre-and postretrieval processes independently affect PM age effects.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2010
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 ¼ 28) exhibited better PM than their younger counterparts (n ¼ 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.
Psychology and Aging, 2008
Studies of age differences in event-based prospective memory indicate wide variation in the magnitude of age effects. One explanation derived from the multiprocess framework proposes that age differences depend on whether the cue to carry out a prospective intention is focal to ongoing task processing. A meta-analysis of 117 effect sizes from 4,709 participants provided evidence for this view, as age effects were greater when the prospective cue to the ongoing task was nonfocal compared with when it was focal. However, the results only support a weaker but not a stronger prediction of the multiprocess framework, as age impairments were reliably above zero for both types of retrieval cues.
Prospective memory and aging: Forgetting intentions over short delays.
Psychology and …, 2000
Retrieved intentions often cannot be performed immediately and must be maintained until there is an opportunity to perform them. In 3 experiments, on seeing a target event, younger and older participants were to withhold an action until they encountered the appropriate phase of the experiment. When initial retrieval was made facile by the use of a salient retrieval cue, the age-related decrements were often dramatic, even over unfilled delay intervals as brief as 10 s (Experiments 1 and 2). When initial retrieval was difficult, older adults showed no forgetting over the retention interval (Experiment 3). Several theoretical perspectives were offered as explanations for the age differences observed with salient retrieval cues, including those that focus on age differences in metamemory, the degree to which plans are reformulated, and the ability to nonstrategically maintain current concerns in working memory.
The age-prospective memory-paradox: an exploration of possible mechanisms
International Psychogeriatrics, 2011
The age-prospective memory-paradox describes the general pattern of age-related deficits in laboratory-based prospective memory tasks and age-related benefits in naturalistic tasks that are carried out in participants' everyday lives. However, the mechanisms which are critical in determining the direction of age effects remain poorly delineated.
Age Differences in Prospective Memory: A Further Evaluation of the Executive Framework
Journal of Cognition and Development
According to the executive framework of prospective memory (PM), age-related differences in PM performance are mediated by agerelated differences in executive functioning (EF). The present study further explored this framework by examining which specific components of EF are associated with PM differences between and within three age groups. A group of children (7-9 years; N = 108), adolescents (12-14 years; N = 112), and adults (17-23 years; N = 106) performed focal-and non-focal event-based PM (EBPM) tasks, a time-based PM (TBPM) task, and tasks measuring EF components. Differences between age groups in focal EBPM, non-focal EBPM, and TBPM performance were mediated by, respectively, differences in interference control and response inhibition, performance on the ongoing task, and differences in working memory and response inhibition. However, within-age group analyses only revealed WM updating as significant predictor of TBPM performance in the adolescent group. These results support and further qualify the executive framework of PM. The differences in outcome dependent on the examined age range might be important for explaining mixed results of previous studies regarding the precise EF components underlying age-related PM task performance differences. Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to realize a delayed intention by "remembering to remember" to perform a future action (Ellis, 1996). PM is crucial for many daily-life tasks and involves different phases, specifically, the formation, retention, initiation, and execution of the intention (Kliegel, Martin, McDaniel, & Einstein, 2002). PM has a retrospective component, remembering what specific action to perform, next to a prospective component, remembering that a specific action must be performed (Einstein & McDaniel, 1996). In addition, a distinction can be made between event-based PM (EBPM) and time-based PM (TBPM), which refers to the type of cue that triggers execution of the intended action (Brandimonte, Einstein, & McDaniel, 1996). In EBPM, this concerns an external cue, such as when remembering to buy bread upon passing a bakery. In TBPM, the intention has to be realized at a specific time or period of time, such as to remember to take medicine in time. PM and executive functions According to an influential theory in the field, the multiprocess theory, PM tasks may require relatively automatic or strategic processes, depending, among other factors, on features of the
Prospective Memory Function in Late Adulthood: Affect at Encoding and Resource Allocation Costs
PLOS ONE, 2015
Some studies have found that prospective memory (PM) cues which are emotionally valenced influence age effects in prospective remembering, but it remains unclear whether this effect reflects the operation of processes implemented at encoding or retrieval. In addition, none of the prior ageing studies of valence on PM function have examined potential costs of engaging in different valence conditions, or resource allocation trade-offs between the PM and the ongoing task. In the present study, younger, young-old and old-old adults completed a PM task in which the valence of the cues varied systematically (positive, negative or neutral) at encoding, but was kept constant (neutral) at retrieval. The results indicated that PM accuracy did not vary as a function of affect at encoding, and that this effect did not interact with age group. There was also no main or interaction effect of valence on PM reaction time in PM cue trials, indicating that valence costs across the three encoding conditions were equivalent. Old-old adults' PM accuracy was reduced relative to both young-old and younger adults. Prospective remembering incurred dual-task costs for all three groups. Analyses of reaction time data suggested that for both young-old and old-old, these costs were greater, implying differential resource allocation cost trade-offs. However, when reaction time data were expressed as a proportional change that adjusted for the general slowing of the older adults, costs did not differ as a function of group.
Emotional target cues eliminate age differences in prospective memory
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2010
Cue saliency is known to influence prospective memory performance, whereby perceptually or conceptually distinct cues facilitate remembering and attenuate adult age-related deficits. The present study investigated whether similar benefits for older adults are also seen for emotional valence. A total of 41 older and 41 younger adults performed a prospective memory task in which the emotional valence of the prospective memory cues was manipulated. Emotionally valenced cues increased prospective memory performance across both groups. Age deficits were only observed when neutral (but not positive or negative) prospective cues were presented. Findings are consistent with predictions that salient cues facilitate participants' prospective memory performance and reduce age-related differences, while extending the concept of saliency to include emotional valence.
Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 2007
Two experiments with younger and older adults were conducted to investigate the output-monitoring component of event-based prospective memory. In the standard form of the task, participants must remember to press a key when a certain class of items is encountered. To evaluate output monitoring, event-based cues were repeated and participants were asked to press a different key if they could remember that an earlier response was made to a particular cue. Younger adults forgot fewer of their successful responses, but displayed a distinct bias to claim that they had responded earlier when actually they had forgotten to respond. By contrast, older adults displayed this bias much less frequently. Elaborated responding to cues had the effect of improving the performance of younger, but not older adults. The results are discussed in terms of natural repetitions and omission errors that might be made in everyday prospective memory tasks.