University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Gerontology. 2014;60(1):73-8. doi: 10.1159/000355057. Epub 2013 Nov 5.
Most laboratory-based studies on prospective memory show a decline with increasing age. Theoretical explanations for age differences focus on the allocation of attentional resources to support prospective remembering. The recruitment of prospective memory target monitoring seems to be influenced by perceived task importance.
In the present study, we investigated the influence of task importance on the magnitude of age differences in event-based prospective memory.
Healthy younger (n = 25) and older (n = 25) adults were instructed a priori to prioritize either the ongoing or the prospective memory task before performing an event-based prospective memory task.
We found an interaction between age and task importance: instructed higher importance of the ongoing task compared to the prospective memory task component produced significant age-related declines in prospective remembering. By contrast, if older adults treated the prospective memory task component as more important than the ongoing task, they achieved equivalent levels of prospective memory performance as their younger counterparts, but did so at a cost to ongoing task performance.
The present data indicate that task importance is one of the factors determining the presence or absence of age deficits in prospective remembering. Findings are discussed in the context of limited processing resources in old age and theoretical frameworks of event-based prospective memory. © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.
大多数基于实验室的前瞻性记忆研究表明，随着年龄的增长，前瞻性记忆会下降。理论解释集中在分配注意力资源以支持前瞻性记忆上。前瞻性记忆目标监测的招募似乎受到感知任务重要性的影响。
本研究旨在探讨任务重要性对基于事件的前瞻性记忆中年龄差异程度的影响。
健康的年轻（n = 25）和年长（n = 25）成年人在执行基于事件的前瞻性记忆任务之前，被事先指示优先考虑正在进行的任务或前瞻性记忆任务。
我们发现年龄和任务重要性之间存在交互作用：与前瞻性记忆任务相比，指令中正在进行的任务更重要，会导致前瞻性记忆显著下降。相比之下，如果老年人将前瞻性记忆任务视为比正在进行的任务更重要，他们的前瞻性记忆表现与年轻组相当，但这是以牺牲正在进行的任务表现为代价的。
本研究数据表明，任务重要性是决定前瞻性记忆中是否存在年龄缺陷的因素之一。研究结果在老年时处理资源有限的背景下和基于事件的前瞻性记忆的理论框架中进行了讨论。
