Aging and strategic prospective memory monitoring

Abstract

Monitoring the environment for the occurrence of prospective memory (PM) targets is a resource-demanding process that produces cost (e.g., slowing) to ongoing activities. Prior research has shown that older adults are able to monitor strategically, which involves the activation of monitoring when contextually appropriate and deactivation of monitoring when it is not thereby affording conservation of limited-capacity attentional resources. However, the time course and efficiency with which these processes operate with increased age are unknown. In the current study, participants performed an ongoing lexical decision task in which words/nonwords were blocked by font color in sets of ten trials (ten red trials followed by ten blue trials). Importantly, participants were informed that PM targets ("TOR" syllable) would only occur in red trials. Replicating previous work, both younger and older adults were successfully able to disengage monitoring upon encountering the unexpected (i.e., blue) context. However, while younger adults completely disengaged monitoring in the unexpected context, older adults continued to show monitoring across the majority of trials. Additionally, younger, but not older, adults showed a re-engagement of monitoring at the end of the unexpected context in preparation for the upcoming expected context. These findings suggest that while strategic monitoring generally remains intact with increased age, the disengagement and preparatory re-engagement of strategic monitoring may operate less optimally for older adults.

Improving prospective memory with contextual cueing

“…Furthermore, it is unclear how DMPV would explain the differential effects of context across the experiments on performance for targets in the first position. However, if one assumes that there are different levels of strategic monitoring required and the second level is not engaged until after the first red trial appears in the context (without warning) conditions in Experiments 1-3, but is engaged by the red fixation stimulus prior to the first target position in the context with warning condition in Experiments 2 and 3, the findings can be accommodated by an explanation that combines the DMPV and a twoprocess monitoring model such as that proposed by Guynn (2003), or the Ball et al (2020) concept of strategic engagement of monitoring in response to context, where approaching a relevant context triggers proactive reengagement of monitoring, and reactive engagement of monitoring occurs once in the relevant context.…”

“…To our knowledge this is the first experiment to examine the effects of context and warnings on PM accuracy as a function of the specific trial location of a target within the relevant context, relative to a no-context control. Lourenço et al (2013) alternated context randomly trial by trial, thus Ball, Li, and Bugg (2020) alternated predictable ten-trial length PM-relevant and PM-irrelevant contexts and compared PM accuracy on targets in the first and second positions of PM-relevant contexts. They found no effect of PM target position on accuracy.…”

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

“…According to the executive framework of PM, several core executive functions (including inhibition, working memory, set-shifting, and strategic monitoring) play a crucial role during certain PM stages (9). In particular, strategic monitoring, which is defined as shifting attention from the ongoing task to the PM task at the appropriate moment, is essential for PM (10). One reason for this is that individuals monitor the external environment for the appear-ance of PM cues.…”

“…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).…”

Distinct monitoring strategies underlie costs and performance in prospective memory

“…On the other hand, spontaneous retrieval is characterized by the encoding of cue–action associations in episodic memory and reliance on cues in the environment to trigger the retrieval of the intention when it is needed (Harrison et al, 2014 ; Rummel & Meiser, 2013 ; Scullin et al, 2010 ). For example, you may continue driving without thinking about your appetite and then happen to read a sign that suddenly makes you remember, “Don’t forget about that bar-b-que!.” While it is evident that there are significant individual and group differences in how effectively individuals engage these two strategies (Ball et al, 2020 ; Brewer et al, 2010 ), precise descriptions of how they are implemented remain elusive.…”