Exploring Age-Related Differences in Prospective Memory Inside and outside of the Lab

Abstract

Age differences in the performance of two prospective memory tasks (activity-based and event-based) were investigated both in laboratory and naturalistic settings. Forty young and 40 older adults participated. First, the participants came to the lab and answered ninety trivia questions with embedded prospective memory tasks. Second, they were required to come to a local mall (naturalistic setting) a few days later to complete various prospective memory tasks. Results indicated that both age groups performed the event-based task followed by activity-based task better in the lab than in the naturalistic setting. The young performed the tasks better than their older counterparts in both contexts, though the effects failed to reach statistical significance. An interesting finding was that older participants performed the naturalistic event-based task better than the young participants. These findings suggest that converting activity-based tasks into event-based tasks may help people accomplish their daily prospective memory tasks more successfully.