Prospective memory tasks related to goals and concerns are rated as more important by both young and older adults

Abstract

There has been little research on variables that affect importance ratings for real prospective memory tasks (e.g., remembering to take medications). Our primary purpose was to test a claim in the motivational-cognitive model of prospective memory, namely that prospective memory tasks highly related to a person's goals and concerns will be rated as more important. We also tested whether this relationship held in both young and older adults. A secondary purpose was to investigate age-related differences in the perceived importance of prospective memory tasks. Older adults and two younger adult groups completed a questionnaire that assessed current prospective memory tasks, their importance, and whether the tasks were related to participants' goals and concerns. As predicted, participants provided higher importance ratings for prospective memory tasks that were highly relevant to their personal goals or concerns, and this was true for both young and older adults. Task importance ratings did not differ for older adults and young college students; however, young nonstudents rated their prospective memory tasks as less important than the other two groups. In all three groups, females gave higher prospective memory task importance ratings than males. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the importance of a prospective memory task is partly determined by its goal-relatedness. This newly demonstrated link suggests important avenues for future research, including research on the mechanisms through which goals improve prospective memory performance.

Task Importance Effects on Prospective Memory Strategy Use

“…Finally, although we are unaware of any findings showing gender differences in importance effects in PM (i.e., gender by importance interactions), we did test for gender effects. Past findings on other aspects of PM have shown a fairly consistent pattern, with females outscoring males on perceived task importance (Penningroth & Scott, 2013), strategy use (Soler & Ruiz, 1996;Uttl & Kibreab, 2011;Yoder & Herrmann, 2003), and actual performance (e.g., Huppert, Johnson, & Nickson, 2000;Maylor & Logie, 2010). However, because there is still little research on gender differences in PM generally and none on the questions we posed, these analyses were exploratory.…”

“…Past findings on other aspects of PM have shown a fairly consistent pattern, with females outscoring males on perceived task importance (Penningroth & Scott, 2013), strategy use (Soler & Ruiz, 1996;Uttl & Kibreab, 2011;Yoder & Herrmann, 2003), and actual performance (e.g., Huppert, Johnson, & Nickson, 2000;Maylor & Logie, 2010). Past findings on other aspects of PM have shown a fairly consistent pattern, with females outscoring males on perceived task importance (Penningroth & Scott, 2013), strategy use (Soler & Ruiz, 1996;Uttl & Kibreab, 2011;Yoder & Herrmann, 2003), and actual performance (e.g., Huppert, Johnson, & Nickson, 2000;Maylor & Logie, 2010).…”

“…Thus, another assumption of the model is that task importance reflects the goal relatedness of the task (the top center box in Figure 1). We recently reported evidence to support this relationship (Penningroth & Scott, 2013).…”

“…Although the focus of the present study was on this specific link in the model, we present the entire model in Figure 1. We recently reported evidence to support this relationship (Penningroth & Scott, 2013). A fundamental assumption in the MCPM model is that PM tasks support higher goals, which exist in hierarchically organized networks (e.g., Austin & Vancouver, 1996;Kruglanski, 1996).…”

Cognitive and Neural Plasticity in Older Adults' Prospective Memory Following Training on the Virtual Week Computer Game

“…The Virtual Week training program was similar to the original, computerized version of the game (Rendell et al, 2007;Rose et al, 2010) except that the time-based tasks in this study required monitoring a clock that indicated the virtual time of day rather than having the times marked on squares of the board (similar to recent Virtual Week studies, e.g., Leitz et al, 2009;Rendell et al, 2011), and the task content varied over the 24 virtual days. Many of the PM tasks simulated actual PM tasks that a sample of older adults (mean age = 75.4 years) reported in a survey study (Penningroth and Scott, 2013). Importantly, task difficulty increased over the 24 virtual days.…”