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Age-Related Changes in Event-Cued Prospective Memory Proper

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Dynamic Cognitive Processes

Summary

Prospective memory proper (ProMP) is required to bring back to awareness previously formed plans and intentions at the right place and time, and to enable us to act upon those plans and intentions. This chapter defines ProMP and distinguishes it from other subdomains of prospective memory (ProM) such as vigilance/monitoring, reviews previous research on and presents the results of a quantitative meta-analysis of age-related changes in event-cued ProM, and reports on a new study examining the relations between ProMP, retrospective memory (RetM), processing resources, and sensory abilities (visual and auditory acuity). The review of previous research indicates that both ProMP and vigilance show substantial declines with aging, that age-declines in ProMP are larger than in vigilance/monitoring, and these age declines have been underestimated in a large portion of the previous studies due to methodological shortcomings such as ceiling-limited scores (ceiling effects) and age confounds in research design. The new study reveals age-related declines in both visual and auditory ProMP that are partially mediated by declines in processing resources and sensory abilities. The combined results highlight the importance of processing resources and sensory functions in mediating age declines in ProMP and delineate the similarities and differences between RetM and ProMP.

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  1. University of Tsukuba, Japan

    Bob Uttl

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  1. Bob Uttl
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  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba Science City, Ibaraki, 305-8572, Japan

    Nobuo Ohta Ph.D. (Professor) & Bob Uttl Ph.D. (Professor) (Professor) &  (Professor)

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada

    Colin M. MacLeod Ph.D. (Professor) (Professor)

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Uttl, B. (2005). Age-Related Changes in Event-Cued Prospective Memory Proper. In: Ohta, N., MacLeod, C.M., Uttl, B. (eds) Dynamic Cognitive Processes. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/4-431-27431-6_12

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