The age prospective memory paradox within the same sample in time-based and event-based tasks

Abstract

The present research investigated the age prospective memory (PM) paradox by testing the performance of the same participants on laboratory and naturalistic PM tasks. Younger, middle-aged, and older adults performed three tasks (time-based, event-based with focal cue, and event-based with nonfocal cue); first in the laboratory, then in the context of their everyday lives. Additionally, the social importance of PM tasks was manipulated in the laboratory. As expected, age-dependent declines on the laboratory tasks were reversed in the naturalistic tasks. Middle-aged adults performed as well as younger adults in the laboratory and as well as the elderly outside of the laboratory. When the social importance of laboratory tasks was stressed, the performance of younger adults fell. In addition, older adults showed higher self-reported commitment to the naturalistic tasks than both younger and middle-aged adults. Findings are discussed in the context of possible explanations for the age PM paradox.

Social importance enhances prospective memory: evidence from an event-based task

“…Moreover, for older adults social importance enhanced prospective memory performance while for younger adults it did not. Critically, this enhancement was not associated with monitoring costs or increased time-checking behavior (see also Niedźwieńska & Barzykowski, 2012 for similar results with an eventbased task, but without any measure of monitoring costs). These results further support the assumption that prospective memory performance can be enhanced by social importance without a cost.…”

Distributed cognition in home environments : The prospective memory and cognitive practices of older adults

“…Both Henry et al (2004) and Uttl (2008) conclude that older adults perform worse than younger adults on time-cued prospective memory tasks in laboratory settings, and both conclude that older adults outperform younger adults in naturalistic settings (see also Kvavilashvili et al, 2013 for a shorter more recent review). Proof of the paradox for time-based tasks has also been found in studies using the same sample of participants in both the laboratory tasks and the tasks situated in everyday settings (Niedźwieńska & Barzykowski, 2012;Rendell & Thomson, 1999;Schnitzspahn, Ihle, et al, 2011). This is in contrast to some that suggest that time-based tasks should be more affected by aging than eventbased tasks, because time-based tasks require more self-initiated processes (see Gonneaud et al, 2011 for a review).…”

“…Niedźwieńska & Barzykowski, 2012;Schnitzspahn et al, 2011). However, Uttl (2008) finds that older adults perform significantly better than younger adults on habitual tasks in natural settings.…”

“…They found a negative age effect in lab-settings but no such effect in the home setting. The study by Niedźwieńska and Barzykowski (2012) is therefore in favor of a paradox. However, altogether the studies referred to above underscore the importance of qualitative descriptions of situations under study.…”

“…Another recent study produced results that favor a paradox is Niedźwieńska and Barzykowski (2012) which compared a laboratory-based proper prospective memory event-based task 2 with a proper event-based task in the home setting across the same participants. They found a negative age effect in lab-settings but no such effect in the home setting.…”