Boywitt C Dennis, Rummel Jan, Meiser Thorsten
a Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences , University of Mannheim , Mannheim , Germany.
Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn. 2015;22(5):560-76. doi: 10.1080/13825585.2014.1002446. Epub 2015 Jan 19.
Performing an intended action when it needs to be withheld, for example, when temporarily prescribed medication is incompatible with the other medication, is referred to as commission errors of prospective memory (PM). While recent research indicates that older adults are especially prone to commission errors for finished intentions, there is a lack of research on the effects of aging on commission errors for still active intentions. The present research investigates conditions which might contribute to older adults' propensity to perform planned intentions under inappropriate conditions. Specifically, disproportionally higher rates of commission errors for still active intentions were observed in older than in younger adults with both salient (Experiment 1) and non-salient (Experiment 2) target cues. Practicing the PM task in Experiment 2, however, helped execution of the intended action in terms of higher PM performance at faster ongoing-task response times but did not increase the rate of commission errors. The results have important implications for the understanding of older adults' PM commission errors and the processes involved in these errors.
在需要抑制时执行预期动作，例如，当临时开具的药物与其他药物不相容时，这被称为前瞻性记忆（PM）的执行错误。虽然最近的研究表明，老年人尤其容易在已完成意图方面出现执行错误，但关于衰老对仍在进行的意图的执行错误的影响却缺乏研究。本研究调查了可能导致老年人在不适当条件下执行计划意图倾向的条件。具体而言，在有显著（实验1）和不显著（实验2）目标线索的情况下，观察到老年人在仍在进行的意图方面的执行错误率比年轻人高得多。然而，在实验2中练习PM任务，在更快的正在进行任务的反应时间下，以更高的PM表现帮助执行了预期动作，但并没有增加执行错误率。这些结果对于理解老年人的PM执行错误以及这些错误所涉及的过程具有重要意义。
