| Description |
Prospective memory (PM) refers to the cognitive function that enables individuals to remember and execute intended actions at a future point in time. This involves the encoding, storage, and retrieval of intentions, facilitating the ability to perform tasks such as remembering to attend appointments, take medication, or complete assignments. Previous studies have aimed to identify whether age differences are evident when completing PM tasks. The literature shows mixed evidence, with some findings demonstrating age-related decline in PM, and others with preservation of PM throughout the lifespan. One possible explanation for the lack of age-related differences in PM performance is that some ways of testing PM may allow participants to rely on familiarity, a process that is thought to remain intact for older adults. For instance, some tasks are structured so that to-be-remembered words are presented with the instruction to perform the PM action of pressing the space bar when those words appear in the ongoing task of a lexical decision task, and recognizing those words as familiar may be sufficient to cue the correct PM task action. Our study is a follow-up to Rand and Hutchison (2009), which presented to-be-remembered names instead of words, and embedded them into a fame-judgment task where participants identified famous and non-famous names. This task design introduced a response conflict when the PM name appeared and seemed familiar: participants could correctly make the PM action, or mistakenly call the PM name "famous". Findings revealed that older adults made this "famous error" more than younger adults, suggesting that they may rely more on familiarity than younger adults. The current study closely followed this procedure but changed the PM action to ringing a bell (instead of pressing the space bar), both adding saliency to the response in the form iii of a visual bell in the workspace and allowing participants a chance to complete the PM action even if they first mistakenly pressed a key. For the current study we recruited 20 younger adults (aged 18-30) and 20 older adults (aged 60-80), who completed the fame judgment task mentioned above. Both older and younger adults make very few mistakes, and no age-related differences were found in overall accuracy, or in making the "famous" error that would indicate higher reliance on familiarity. We discuss potential reasons for this lack of age-related findings, which include the increased saliency provided by the bell, as well as history effects introduced between 2009 and 2024. |
