Age-related impairment in an event-based prospective-memory task

Abstract

Slides of famous people were presented to participants with the instructions to name each face and circle the trial number if the person was wearing glasses (prospective-memory target event). Participants in their 50s and 60s (n = 56) were more successful than participants in their 70s and 80s (n = 59) at both the naming an prospective-memory tasks. An age-related increase in the probability of forgetting replicated an earlier prospective-memory study (E. A. Maylor, 1993); in the present case, there was also an age-related decrease in the probability of recovery. These effects of age remained significant after other measures of current ability were taken into account, including intelligence, speed, and naming performance. For participants who were in both the earlier study (E. A. Maylor, 1993) and this study (n = 65), the correlation between prospective-memory performance on the 2 occasions was significant but only for younger participants. Performance in the prospective-memory task was entirely unrelated to performance in the naming task.