Abstract
Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to perform a planned action at a future time. Older adults have shown moderate declines in PM, which are thought to be driven by age-related changes in the prefrontal cortex. However, an age-PM paradox is often reported, whereby deficits are evident in laboratory-based PM tasks, but not naturalistic PM tasks. The key aims of this study were to: (1) examine the age-PM paradox using the same sample across laboratory and ecological settings; and (2) determine whether self-reported PM and cognitive factors such as working memory and IQ are associated PM performance. Two PM tasks were administered (ecological vs. laboratory) to a sample of 23 community-dwelling older adults (Mage = 72.30, SDage = 5.62) and 28 young adults (Mage = 20.18, SDage = 3.30). Participants also completed measures of general cognitive function, working memory, IQ, and self-reported memory. Our results did not support the existence of the age-PM paradox. Strong age effects across both laboratory and ecological PM tasks were observed in which older adults consistently performed worse on the PM tasks than young adults. In addition, PM performance was significantly associated with self-reported PM measures in young adults. For older adults, IQ was associated with time-based PM. These findings suggest that the age-PM paradox is more complex than first thought and there are differential predictors of PM performance for younger and older adults.
Highlights
Despite our best intentions, we sometimes, and often fail to remember to perform an intended action on the appropriate occasion or at the right time
Two young adults and five older adults from the original sample was excluded from analyses due to failure to score at least 50% proportion correct on the ongoing task on both lexical decision task (LDT) and ecological prospective memory (PM) task
We only found a significant negative correlation between the Brief Assessment of Prospective Memory (BAPM) B and time-based PM performance for older adults – the more important older adults rated PM failures, the worse they performed on time-based PM task
Summary
We sometimes, and often fail to remember to perform an intended action on the appropriate occasion or at the right time. Aging typically comes with a deterioration of cognitive functioning, such as memory (i.e., working memory and episodic memory; Luo and Craik, 2008), and executive functions (Fisk and Sharp, 2004) This decline is associated with substantial shrinkage of gray and white matter in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, basal ganglia and changes in structural connectivity (Raz et al, 2005). Cognitive processes such as learning, memory (including PM), and executive functions that rely on the prefrontal and medial temporal cortex functions decline with age (Burke and Barnes, 2006). Understanding PM processes in older adulthood has implications for individuals’ everyday functioning and quality of life
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