Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Oct 31;18(10):e0293599.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293599. eCollection 2023.

Habitual prospective memory in preschool children

Andrew J Kelly  1 , Abigail A Camden  2 , Melany C Williams  1 , Michael J Beran  1 , Bonnie M Perdue  2
Affiliations

Habitual prospective memory in preschool children

Andrew J Kelly et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Habitual prospective memory (PM) refers to situations in which individuals have to remember to perform a future task on a regular and frequent basis. Habitual PM tasks are ubiquitous and the ability to successfully complete these tasks (e.g., remembering to bring your lunch to school every day) is necessary for children as they begin to establish their own independence. The current investigation is the first to explore preschool children's ability to complete this kind of task. At the end of a regular testing session during which children engaged in a variety of unrelated cognitive tasks, participants were instructed to ask for a stamp on their card, which was sitting in a box on the table. Over the course of the first experiment, participants did this 13 times, spanning a time period of several months. The results demonstrated that children initially needed prompting from the experimenter to remember, but with experience, participants were able to retrieve this intention without assistance. Experiment 2 demonstrated that removing the box from participants' line of sight after numerous opportunities to perform the task did not negatively impact performance, although it did make a difference at the outset of this requirement to remember to ask for stamps. Together, these results indicate that with somewhat consistent and repeated practice, preschool children can fairly quickly demonstrate the ability to successfully perform future intentions that are likely to be repeated on numerous occasions.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. PM performance over the first five trials as a function of visible (N = 17) or nonvisible (N = 11) Initial Learning condition.
Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.
Fig 2
Fig 2. PM performance over 10 trials as a function visibility condition.
Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Participants switched conditions after the 5th trial.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Einstein GO, McDaniel MA. Normal aging and prospective memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition. 1990. Jul;16(4):717. doi: 10.1037//0278-7393.16.4.717 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Einstein GO, McDaniel MA, Thomas R, Mayfield S, Shank H, Morrisette N, et al.. Multiple processes in prospective memory retrieval: factors determining monitoring versus spontaneous retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 2005. Aug;134(3):327. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.134.3.327 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Kvavilashvili L, Messer DJ, Ebdon P. Prospective memory in children: the effects of age and task interruption. Developmental psychology. 2001. May;37(3):418. doi: 10.1037//0012-1649.37.3.418 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Einstein GO, McDaniel MA. Prospective memory: Multiple retrieval processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2005. Dec;14(6):286–90.
    1. Smith RE. The cost of remembering to remember in event-based prospective memory: investigating the capacity demands of delayed intention performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 2003. May;29(3):347. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.29.3.347 - DOI - PubMed