Investigating prospective memory via eye tracking: No evidence for a monitoring deficit in older adults

Abstract

Prospective memory (PM) refers to remembering to perform intended actions in the future. Older adults in particular have been shown to be negatively affected by PM tasks that require a high amount of attentional resources (i.e., nonfocal tasks). This age-related PM deficit has been attributed to reduced target monitoring in this age group older adults. However, this conclusion was based on indirect measures of monitoring, such as costs of the ongoing task. The present study set out to 1) investigate older adults' PM target monitoring by, for the first time, employing a direct measure (i.e., eye tracking), 2) assess differences in monitoring between PM tasks that differ in their focality, and 3) examine whether differences in PM monitoring can indeed explain older adults' reduced PM performance in nonfocal tasks. Results demonstrate that while older, but not younger adults, showed reduced performance in a nonfocal PM task, overt monitoring (eye movements) of these groups did not differ between focality conditions. Further analyses showed that older adults' performance was still reduced on the strategically more demanding task after controlling for overt target monitoring (i.e., including only trials in which the participant monitored). In contrast to indirect measures of cue monitoring, our findings illustrate that older adults' deficits on nonfocal PM tasks cannot (exclusively) be explained by reduced monitoring. Instead, processing that takes place after target monitoring are discussed as possible mechanisms underlying older adults' reduced PM performance in nonfocal tasks.

Distinct monitoring strategies underlie costs and performance in prospective memory

“…Prospective remembering is a complex and multifaceted process. Individual differences in working memory capacity, updating, task switching, and inhibitory control can factor into PM performance (Ball & Brewer, 2018 ; Ballhausen, et al, 2019 ; Koslov et al, 2019 ; Rose et al, 2010 ; Zuber et al, 2016 ; Zuber et al, 2019 ). Unexplained variance in prospective remembering can likely be attributed to some combination of these processes.…”

“…Whereas aggregating over trials improves statistical power, eye-tracking affords the ability to observe precise moments in time to identify monitoring behaviors across different situations and individuals. To date, only a handful of studies have used eye-tracking to study PM (e.g., Ballhausen et al, 2019 ; Bowden et al, 2017 ; Chen et al, 2013 ; Hartwig et al, 2013 ; Shelton & Christopher, 2016 ; West et al, 2007 ), and these have provided unique insights into monitoring behavior. In general, these studies support the idea that individuals increase attention allocated towards active monitoring of PM stimuli in response to environmental cues or contexts, and that increased active monitoring is related to better PM performance.…”

Aging Effect in Prospective Memory Monitoring: An Eye-Tracking Study

“…Although the age-related impairment of PM processes is mostly attributed to the impairment of the strategic monitoring process (10), more recent literature has emerged that offers contradictory findings on the effect of aging on strategic monitoring (11,12). These studies suggest that strategic monitoring is not affected by aging (11,12). These controversial results may be related to methodological limitations, however.…”

“…Strategic monitoring can be measured directly, especially by providing a target outside the ongoing task area and taking eye-tracking records. Physiological data based on eye-tracking records provide detailed information to understand and explain the mechanisms underlying many complex cognitive processes such as attention (16), visual perception (17), and memory (11,13). For this reason, it is frequently used in the fields of "Psychology" and "Neuroscience".…”

“…For this reason, it is frequently used in the fields of "Psychology" and "Neuroscience". In the PM research area, although only a few studies have investigated strategic monitoring using the eye-tracking method (11,13), these studies have shown that eye-tracking methods are ideal instruments to measure strategic monitoring directly. One study compared the strategic monitoring performances of older and younger participants in event-based PM tasks using the eye-tracking method and demonstrated that there was no difference between older and younger participants in terms of strategic monitoring, unlike behavioral measurements (11).…”