Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia; La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia.
Cognition. 2020 Sep;202:104305. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104305. Epub 2020 Jun 1.
Prior prospective memory (PM) research shows paradoxical findings-young adults outperform older adults in laboratory settings, but the reverse is found in naturalistic settings. Moreover, young-old outperform old-old adults in laboratory settings, but show no age differences in naturalistic settings. Here we highlight how time-based task characteristics have differed systematically between studies conducted in laboratory (time-interval cues) and naturalistic settings (time-of-day cues) and argue that this apparent paradox is a function of comparing disparate task types. In three experiments, we tested this hypothesis using analogous paradigms across settings, with event-based, time-of-day, and time-interval cued PM tasks. Experiment 1 compared young (n = 40) and older (n = 53) adults on a laboratory paradigm that measured PM tasks embedded in a virtual, daily life narrative; and on a conceptually parallel paradigm using a customized smartphone application (MEMO) in actual daily life. Results revealed that on the MEMO, older adults outperformed young adults on the time-of-day tasks but did not differ on the time-interval or event-based task. In contrast, older adults performed worse than young adults in the laboratory. Experiment 2 compared PM performance in young-old (n = 64) and old-old (n = 40) adults using the same paradigms. Young-old outperformed old-old adults in the laboratory; however, group differences were not evident in daily life. Experiment 3 compared young (n = 42) and older (n = 41) adults, and largely replicated the findings of Experiment 1 using a more demanding version of MEMO. These findings provide novel and important insights into the limiting conditions of the age-PM paradox and the need for a finer theoretical delineation of time-based tasks.
先前关于前瞻性记忆（PM）的研究得出了一些矛盾的结果——在实验室环境中，年轻成年人比老年人表现更好，但在自然环境中则相反。此外，在实验室环境中，年轻老年人比老年人表现更好，但在自然环境中则没有年龄差异。在这里，我们强调了基于时间的任务特征在实验室（时间间隔线索）和自然环境（时间线索）中进行的研究之间是如何系统地不同的，并认为这种明显的悖论是比较不同任务类型的结果。在三个实验中，我们使用类似的范式在不同的环境中测试了这一假设，包括基于事件、基于时间和基于时间间隔的 PM 任务。实验 1 在实验室范式中比较了年轻（n=40）和年长（n=53）成年人的 PM 任务，该范式嵌入了一个虚拟的日常生活叙述中；并在使用定制智能手机应用程序（MEMO）的概念上平行的范式中在实际日常生活中进行了比较。结果表明，在 MEMO 上，年长成年人在基于时间的任务上优于年轻成年人，但在基于时间间隔或基于事件的任务上没有差异。相比之下，年长成年人在实验室中的表现不如年轻成年人。实验 2 使用相同的范式比较了年轻老年人（n=64）和老年老年人（n=40）的 PM 表现。年轻老年人在实验室中表现优于老年老年人；然而，在日常生活中没有出现群体差异。实验 3 比较了年轻（n=42）和年长（n=41）成年人，并且使用 MEMO 的更具挑战性的版本很大程度上复制了实验 1 的发现。这些发现为年龄-PM 悖论的限制条件和对基于时间的任务进行更精细的理论描述的必要性提供了新的重要见解。
