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. Recently there has been a great deal of interest in the study of prospective memory in younger and older adults (Brandimonte, Einstein, & McDaniel, 1996). Prospective memory refers to the memory required to carry out planned actions at the appropriate time, such as meeting a friend for lunch or taking a medication. Prospective memory involves retrieval of an intention to act that has been stored in long-term memory. An important element of prospective remembering is that one is typically engaged in a different kind of action or ongoing cognitive processing at the point in which prospective remembering is required (Park & Kidder, 1996; Park & Mayhorn, 1996). Prospective memory is important in maintaining function in everyday life, so it is of considerable interest as to whether this type of memory does decline in late adulthood. Although there is substantial evidence that both working memory and long-term memory decline with age (Craik & Jennings, 1992; Park et al., 1996), somewhat less is known about the relationship between aging and prospective memory. Naturalistic research on prospective memory that requires old and young adults to make phone calls or mail postcards at appointed times has yielded mixed evidence, with some studies reporting equivalent performance

Despite strong evidence for normal, age-related cognitive decline in this sample, older adults had sufficient cognitive function to manage medications. A busy lifestyle and middle age were more determinant of who was at risk of nonadherence than beliefs about medication or illness. Thus, practicing physicians should not assume that older adults have insufficient cognitive resources to manage medications and that they will be the most likely to make adherence errors. Very busy middle-aged adults seem to be at the greatest risk of managing medications improperly.

No abstract

Medication adherence behaviors of 61 elderly adults were examined using a sensitive microelectronic monitoring device. To assess the effects of external cognitive supports on adherence, different subjects received (a) no intervention, (b) an organizational chart, (c) an over-the-counter medication organizer, or (d) both the chart and organizer. The young-old subjects showed a high rate of adherence (94%) and were not improved by the addition of the interventions. Old-old subjects had a lower rate of adherence (85%) than young-olds. Omission errors were the most frequent mistakes and were lower in the condition in which subjects received both chart and organizer.

We conducted a survey to document World Wide Web use patterns in middle-aged (ages 40-59), young-old (ages 60-74), and old-old adults (ages 75-92). We conducted this survey of 550 adults 40 years old and over in southeastern Michigan, and the overall response rate was approximately 71%. The results suggested that (a) there are distinct age and demographic differences in individuals who use the Web; (b) middle-aged and older Web users are similar in their use patterns; (c) the two primary predictors for not using the Web are lack of access to a computer and lack of knowledge about the Web; (d) old-old adults have the least interest in using the Web compared with middle-aged and young-old adults; and (e) the primary content areas in learning how to use the Web are learning how to use electronic mail and accessing health information and information about traveling for pleasure. This research may serve as a preliminary attempt to ascertain the issues that must be faced in order to increase use of the World Wide Web in middle-aged and older adults.