Age-related differences in everyday prospective memory tasks: The role of planning and personal importance

Abstract

The aim of the present studies was to investigate whether age-related improvement found in naturalistic but experimenter-given prospective memory (PM) tasks can be generalized to real-life intentions. In Study 1, younger, middle-aged, and older adults generated a list of intended activities for the following week; one week later they marked the tasks that they had performed. The participants were also asked to rate the importance of each listed intention and to describe the circumstances of completion that were already known to them. We found that, compared with younger adults, older adults attributed a higher degree of importance to their intentions and had the circumstances of their completion better planned. However, the age-related benefit in the PM performance for all listed intentions was not present for the very important and well-planned tasks. In Study 2 we manipulated whether younger adults engaged or not in the detailed planning of when their intentions could be completed. It was demonstrated that younger adults who had to perform detailed planning completed their intended activities more often than those who did not plan for their intentions. The results support explanations of the age-related benefit in everyday PM that highlight the role of importance and planning.

El propósito de los presentes estudios fue investigar si se puede generalizar la mejora etaria encontrada en tareas de memoria prospectiva (PM) naturalistas pero dadas por el experimentador, a los fines en la vida real. En el Estudio 1, adultos jóvenes, de edad intermedia y mayores generaron una lista de actividades pretendidas para la semana siguiente; una semana después marcaron las tareas que realizaron. También se pidió a los participantes que estimaran la importancia de cada propósito enlistado y describieran las circunstancias para concluirlos que fueron familiares para ellos. Encontramos que, en comparación con los adultos jóvenes, los adultos mayores atribuyeron un grado mayor de importancia a sus propósitos y tuvieron mejor planificadas las circunstancias para concluirlos. Sin embargo, el beneficio etario en la ejecución de la PM para todos los propósitos enlistados no se dio para las tareas muy importantes y bien planificadas. En el Estudio 2 manipulamos si los adultos jóvenes se ocuparon o no de planificar con detalle cuándo podrían concluir sus propósitos. Se demostró que los adultos jóvenes que tuvieron que realizar una planificación detallada concluyeron sus actividades pretendidas más a menudo que aquellos que no planificaron sus propósitos. Los resultados apoyan las explicaciones del beneficio etario en la PM cotidiana que resaltan el papel de la importancia y la planificación.

Est-ce que l'amélioration liée à l'âge telle que constatée dans les tâches de mémoire prospective naturelles, mais présentées par un expérimentateur peut être généralisée aux intentions dans la vie de tous les jours? Dans l'étude 1, des adultes jeunes, d'âge moyen et plus âgés ont produit une liste d'activités prévues pour la semaine suivante. Une semaine plus tard, ils indiquaient les tâches effectivement accomplies. Les participants devaient aussi évaluer l'importance de chacune des intentions dont la liste avait été dressée et décrire les circonstances de leur accomplissement qui leur étaient déjà connues. Nous avons trouvé que, par rapport aux jeunes adultes, les adultes plus âgés accordaient un niveau d'importance plus élevé à leurs intentions et que les circonstances de leur accomplissement étaient mieux planifiées. Toutefois, l'avantage lié à l'âge pour la performance de mémoire prospective pour l'ensemble des intentions mentionnées ne se manifestait pas dans le cas des tâches très importantes et bien planifiées. Dans la seconde étude, nous avons manipulé la possibilité que des adultes plus jeunes s'engagent ou non dans une planification détaillée quand leurs intentions pouvaient être réalisées. Il en est résulté que les adultes plus jeunes qui devaient se livrer à une planification détaillée réalisaient leurs activités prévues plus souvent que ceux qui n'avaient pas planifié leurs intentions. Les résultats confortent les explications de l'avantage lié à l'âge dans la mémoire prospective de tous les jours qui mettent de l'avant le rôle de l'importance et de la planification.

Keywords::

• Prospective memory
• Age benefits
• Real-life tasks
• Personal importance
• Planning

Notes

This research was supported by Ministry of Science and Higher Education Grant NN106 040534 2008–2011 to Grzegorz Sędek. We thank Jarosław Chański, Jadwiga Lipecka, and Bożena Markot for supplying some of the data.

¹ Similarly to Freeman and Ellis (2003), we treated intentions with no information about the day and time of their fulfillment as temporal deviations because their occurrence at a given point in the generation phase suggested an interruption in any ongoing temporal organization in the output of intentions.

² Although the age effect on the number of generated activities for the groups that described their intentions was not significant (p = .089), we considered the potentially confounding effect of the number of intentions on the obtained age-related differences in importance, planning, and temporal organization. We repeated one-way ANOVAs on the measures of intention characteristics with the number of intentions as a covariate. In all the analyses main effects of the number of intentions were not significant (F values < 1) whereas the age effects on dependent variables remained significant and of the same size as in the original ANOVAs (on the importance measure it became nearly significant, F(2, 95) = 3.01, p = .054, η² = .06).

³ We did not conduct 3 (age group) × 2 (PM performance: completed vs. forgotten) ANOVA on importance ratings because such comparisons would exclude from the analyses the results for the substantial number of participants who completed all self-generated intentions. This would have distorted the results substantially because three-quarters of these potentially excluded participants would have been older adults; these adults also gave high importance ratings.

⁴ As in the analyses on personal importance, we did not conduct a 3 (age group) × 2 (PM performance: completed vs. forgotten) ANOVA on predictability scores because a substantial number of participants had performed all their intended activities. Out of these potentially excluded participants, two-thirds would have been older adults who also had high predictability scores.

⁵ Conclusions from this analysis should be drawn with caution on account of the different data sources.