Prospective memory and ageing paradox with event-based tasks: A study of young, young-old, and old-old participants

Abstract

Research on ageing and prospective memory—remembering to do something in the future—has resulted in paradoxical findings, whereby older adults are often impaired in the laboratory but perform significantly better than younger adults in naturalistic settings. Nevertheless, there are very few studies that have examined prospective memory both in and outside the laboratory using the same sample of young and old participants. Moreover, most naturalistic studies have used time-based tasks, and it is unclear whether the prospective memory and ageing paradox extends to event-based tasks. In this study, 72 young (18–30 years), 79 young-old (61–70 years), and 72 old-old (71–80 years) participants completed several event-based tasks in and outside the laboratory. Results showed that the ageing paradox does exist for event-based tasks but manifests itself differently from that in time-based tasks. Thus, younger adults outperformed old-old participants in two laboratory event-based tasks, but there were no age effects for a naturalistic task completed at home (remembering to write the date and time in the upper left corner of a questionnaire). The young and old-old also did not differ in remembering to retrieve a wristwatch from a pocket at the end of the laboratory session. This indicates that the paradox may be due to differences in ongoing task demands in the lab and everyday life, rather than the location per se. The findings call for a concentrated effort towards a theory of cognitive ageing that identifies the variables that do, or do not, account for this paradox.

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

“…But importantly, for the two event-based tasks in laboratory settings the authors note that they could not be certain that the intention had left consciousness before the introduction of the cue circa 10 minutes later. Kvavilashvili et al (2013) therefore suggest that the inconsistent pattern within eventbased PM is due to differences in ongoing task demands between studies measuring PM in lab and in natural settings, and across studies.…”

“…A recent study by Kvavilashvili et al (2013) compared the age groups 18-30, 61-70, 71-80, for which they found no in-between significant differences for the prospective or the retrospective components in natural settings. When comparing between measures of processing speed, retrospective memory and two traditional laboratory-based PM event-based tasks within the same sample, they found significant age-related declines.…”

“…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).…”

“…Some of these types of tasks are often argued to be so called naturalistic tasks, while others are considered to be non-naturalistic. The results produced from studies that included these tasks are what led to the discovery of the paradox Findings within the experimental field of prospective memory suggest that older adults perform better in real-life settings than what might be expected based on older adults' performances on standardized tests of prospective memory (known as the prospective memory and aging paradox, Aberle, Rendell, Rose, McDaniel, & Kliegel, 2010;Bailey, Henry, Rendell, Phillips, & Kliegel, 2010;Kvavilashvili, Cockburn, & Kornbrot, 2013;Kvavilashvili & Fisher, 2007;Rendell & Thomson, 1999;Schnitzspahn, Ihle, Henry, Rendell, & Kliegel, 2011). Despite the fact that older adults appear to perform better in real-life settings than what is predicted from their performance in standardized testing in laboratory there are two extensive meta-reviews (Henry, MacLeod, Phillips, & Crawford, 2004;Uttl, 2008) that partly complicate these findings.…”

“… The first is known as the Einstein and McDaniel (1990) paradigm (Kvavilashvili, Cockburn, & Kornbrot, 2013) and is a kind of testing often conducted through a computer interface. This is a testing where participants are engaged in some ongoing arbitrary task, and where there is a recurring prospective memory task embedded into the arbitrary task, which can be either time-based or event-based.…”