Assessing prospective memory in older age: the relationship between self-report and performance on clinic-based and naturalistic tasks

ABSTRACT

This investigation assessed the relationship between subjective self-reports and objective measures of prospective memory with forty-eight healthy, community-dwelling older-adults (> 65 years). The Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire provided the self-report data, the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test was used as a clinic-based test, and the Telephone Task (telephoning the examiner at irregular, pre-scheduled times across one week) was used as a naturalistic measure. The self-reported difficulties were negatively associated with performance on the naturalistic task, r (41) = -0.341, p = <0.05, but not the clinic-based task. Performance tasks (clinic-based and naturalistic) were moderately associated, r (41) = 0.312, p = <0.05. Tests of retrospective memory (delayed recall) and executive function (attention set-shifting) did not individually predict performance on any of the prospective memory measures. Incorporating naturalistic probes of prospective memory performance into a clinical assessment may allow insight into the experience of prospective memory challenges in older-age clients.

KEYWORDS:

• Prospective memory
• older adults
• subjective memory
• neuropsychology assessment
• naturalistic assessment

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participants for their time and contribution to this study, Camilla Hume for her assistance with study data collection and entry and Professor Ben Ong for his guidance in the preliminary stages of this study.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Commonwealth Research Training Scheme award to L.G.