Individual differences in everyday retrospective memory failures

Abstract

The present study examined individual differences in everyday retrospective memory failures. Undergraduate students completed various cognitive ability measures in the laboratory and recorded everyday retrospective memory failures in a diary over the course of a week. The majority of memory failures were forgetting information pertaining to exams and homework, forgetting names, and forgetting login and ID information. Using latent variable techniques the results also suggested that individual differences in working memory capacity and retrospective memory were related to some but not all everyday memory failures. Furthermore, everyday memory failures predicted SAT scores and partially accounted for the relation between cognitive abilities and SAT scores. These results provide important evidence for individual differences in everyday retrospective memory failures as well as important evidence for the ecological validity of laboratory measures of working memory capacity and retrospective memory.