Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany,
Psychon Bull Rev. 2013 Dec;20(6):1266-73. doi: 10.3758/s13423-013-0451-y.
People often slow down their ongoing activities when they must remember an intended action, known as the cost or interference effect of prospective memory (PM). Only a few studies have examined adult age differences in PM interference, and the specific reasons underlying such differences are not well understood. The authors used a model-based approach to reveal processes underlying PM interference and age differences in these processes. Older and younger adults first performed a block of an ongoing lexical decision task alone. An embedded event-based PM task was added in a second block. Simultaneously accounting for the changes in response time distributions and error rates induced by the PM task, Ratcliff's (Psychological Review 85:59-108, 1978) diffusion model was used to decompose the nonlinear combination of speed and accuracy into psychologically meaningful components. Remembering an intention not only reduced processing efficiency in both age groups, but also prolonged peripheral nondecision times and induced response cautiousness. Overall, the findings suggest that there are multiple, but qualitatively similar factors underlying PM task interference in both age groups.
当人们必须记住一个预期的动作时，他们通常会减缓正在进行的活动，这被称为前瞻性记忆（PM）的成本或干扰效应。只有少数研究考察了成年人在 PM 干扰方面的年龄差异，并且对于这种差异的具体原因还不是很清楚。作者使用基于模型的方法来揭示 PM 干扰和这些过程中的年龄差异的背后的过程。年长和年轻的成年人首先单独执行一个正在进行的词汇判断任务的块。在第二个块中添加了基于事件的嵌入式 PM 任务。同时考虑到 PM 任务引起的反应时间分布和错误率的变化，Ratcliff 的（心理评论 85:59-108,1978）扩散模型用于将速度和准确性的非线性组合分解为具有心理意义的成分。记住一个意图不仅降低了两个年龄组的处理效率，而且延长了外围非决策时间并引起了反应谨慎。总的来说，这些发现表明，在两个年龄组中，PM 任务干扰的背后存在多种但本质上相似的因素。
