Bailey Phoebe E, Henry Julie D, Rendell Peter G, Phillips Louise H, Kliegel Matthias
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2010 Apr;63(4):646-52. doi: 10.1080/17470210903521797. Epub 2010 Jan 25.
Previous research has identified "the age-prospective memory paradox"-that adult ageing results in reliably poorer performance on laboratory-based tasks of prospective memory (PM), but improved performance on such tasks carried out in real-life settings. We hypothesized that even in their everyday environment, older adults might be worse at PM tasks that are triggered during an experimenter-generated ongoing activity. The present study used a task that captured the key features of the classic laboratory paradigm, but which was completed in a setting that met key criteria to be considered naturalistic. In their everyday setting, participants' PM was assessed, with the cue to remember occurring either (a) during their day-to-day activities, or (b) during an experimenter-generated ongoing task. The results confirmed previous naturalistic findings, in showing that older adults (n = 28) exhibited better PM than their younger counterparts (n = 65) when prompted during their everyday activities. However, older adults were also then subsequently less likely to show effective PM during experimenter-generated ongoing activity. Reproducing the paradox within a single dataset, these data indicate that older adults can effectively act on intentions during everyday activities, but have difficulty in prospective remembering during experimenter-generated ongoing tasks.
先前的研究已经确定了“年龄前瞻性记忆悖论”——成年人的衰老导致在基于实验室的前瞻性记忆（PM）任务中表现可靠地变差，但在现实生活环境中执行此类任务时表现有所改善。我们假设，即使在日常环境中，老年人在实验者发起的持续活动中触发的PM任务上可能也会表现更差。本研究使用了一项任务，该任务捕捉了经典实验室范式的关键特征，但却是在符合自然主义关键标准的环境中完成的。在日常环境中，对参与者的PM进行评估，记忆线索要么（a）在他们的日常活动中出现，要么（b）在实验者发起的持续任务中出现。结果证实了先前的自然主义研究结果，即当在日常活动中得到提示时，老年人（n = 28）比年轻人（n = 65）表现出更好的PM。然而，在实验者发起的持续活动中，老年人随后表现出有效PM的可能性也更低。这些数据在单个数据集中重现了这一悖论，表明老年人在日常活动中能够有效地按照意图行动，但在实验者发起的持续任务中进行前瞻性记忆时存在困难。
