THE EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES OF ADULTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR PROSE RECALL‐PART I

Abstract

This paper reports a thorough investigation of reading habits and activities which may require skills used in prose recall tasks as they occur in the everyday lives of adults. Over the space of five weeks, fifty‐four participants (18 young, aged 18‐32; 18 middle, aged 40‐54; 18 older, aged over 62) kept structured diaries in which they indicated how they spent their time, as well as the specific materials they had read and how long they had spent reading each item. Analyses were performed on each of 23 reading variables and 20 activity variables. Part I of the paper considers whether there were age and vocabulary differences in activities. Results indicate that while such differences exist, primarily in the amount of time spent reading, everyday activities and reading habits were also related to the requirements of daily life‐‐school, employment, retirement. Part II of the paper uses a cluster analysis of the data to demonstrate that the patterning of everyday activities was more influenced by current schooling and career factors than by the age and vocabulary level of the participants. Part II also considers the ecological validity of prose recall studies by examining the frequency of activities similar to laboratory‐style prose recall tasks and finds that such activities have a very low incidence in the everyday lives of adults.