The Cost of Prospective Memory in Children: The Role of Cue Focality

Abstract

Prospective memory (PM) is an essential ability in daily life, since it involves remembering to perform an intention. While PM largely develops during childhood and adolescence, its underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. In general, age differences in PM have been found with tasks in which the prospective cues are not part of the ongoing activity (non-focal PM tasks). In the present study, we evaluated the cognitive cost produced by a PM task over the ongoing activity by comparing the performance of a single-task condition with that of an ongoing activity condition involving a prospective intention. Specifically, to determine the impact of cue focality on performance as a function of age, we tested two groups of children (6 and 11 years old) in three experimental conditions: single, focal and non-focal prospective cues. In the single-task condition, children were only asked to perform the ongoing task (to categorize images as animal or non-animal). In the focal condition, in addition to performing the ongoing activity, participants were asked to press different keys whenever the image appearing on the screen was a kite or a ball. In the non-focal condition, children were to press the keys if the color of the frame of the screen changed to magenta or gray. Although reaction times were greater for the non-focal conditions in both age groups, the results showed worse performance on the ongoing activity for both the focal and the non-focal conditions (relative to the single-task condition) in the younger children. This difference was less pronounced in older children so that response times for focal and non-focal cues differed from the single condition, but the difference in performance between focal and single task conditions was not reliable. These findings, which are partly in line with the dual process framework (McDaniel et al., 2015), suggest that while non-focal prospective cues compromise attentional control in younger and older children, focal cues seem to rely on less effortful processes in older children.

Toward a better understanding of costs in prospective memory: A meta-analytic review.

“…We therefore ran an unplanned model including the squared age term to look for evidence of nonlinearity. The effect was marginally significant for nonfocal tasks, B = .0004 [−0.000, .0008], t = 1.88, p = .06, and further inspection confirmed a notable outlier likely having undue influence (a nonfocal effect size with children aged 11 was d = 2.90; Cejudo et al, 2019). Removal of this outlier eliminated all previously reported age effects.…”

“…A follow-up linear combination test further showed that the difference in costs between focal and nonfocal tasks was marginally significant, z = 1.88, p = .06. We suspected that this trend could reflect the influence of children and adolescents, reasoning that nonfocal tasks may be especially difficult for children because their frontal lobes are not fully developed (Cejudo, Gómez-Ariza, & Bajo, 2019). We therefore ran an unplanned model including the squared age term to look for evidence of nonlinearity.…”

Inhibition in preschool children at risk of developmental language disorder

“…The current findings suggest that for these children, the ability to monitor or rehearse the PM intention is still developing and therefore therapeutic support (i.e. providing salient cues) has the potential to improve their ability to follow instructions (and organisation) in everyday life (Cejudo et al, 2019).…”

How do the cognitive processes matter in the event-based preschoolers’ prospective memory?

“…Therefore, the potential challenges associated with maintaining a prospective intention while conducting an OT appear to be greater for a nonfocal PM task (cf. Cejudo et al, 2019 ). Current evidence suggests that children are more successful in performing focal tasks at an earlier stage of life compared to nonfocal tasks (however, see Kelly et al, 2023 , for contrary findings).…”

“…In our study, we analyzed children’s monitoring during the OT in both focal and nonfocal tasks. Monitoring in PM is typically analyzed by comparing reaction times in OTs between different PM and control (no PM task) conditions, with monitoring costs measured as slower reaction times in PM conditions (e.g., McDaniel et al, 2011 ; Chi et al, 2014 for adults studies; Cejudo et al, 2019 for children study). Cejudo et al (2019) conducted a study on children’s performance in a control condition, and compared it with performance in two PM conditions that varied in cue focality.…”