ABSTRACT

There is mixed evidence on the impact of delay task difficulty on prospective memory (PM) performance and little research has examined this among older adults. The present study examined younger (N = 60) and older (N = 57) adults’ prospective memory (PM) performance after completing an easy or difficult Raven’s matrices task. To assess whether delay difficulty impacted how often participants thought about their PM intention, participants were asked to report on what they thought about during the delay task itself and retrospectively after all tasks were completed. Younger adults outperformed older adults on the PM task; however, delay task difficulty had no impact PM for either age group. Reports of thinking about the intention during the delay task differed by age group depending whether they were online or retrospective, however, overall greater reports of thinking about the intention was positively associated with PM performance.

摘要

关于延迟任务难度对前瞻记忆 (PM) 表现的影响，证据不一，而且很少有研究在老年人中对此进行过研究。本研究检查了年轻 (N = 60) 和年长 (N = 57) 成年人在完成简单或困难的 Raven 矩阵任务后的前瞻记忆 (PM) 表现。为了评估延迟困难是否影响参与者思考他们的 PM 意图的频率，参与者被要求报告他们在延迟任务本身期间和所有任务完成后回顾的想法。年轻人在 PM 任务上的表现优于老年人；然而，延迟任务难度对任何一个年龄组的 PM 都没有影响。在延迟任务期间思考意图的报告因年龄组而异，这取决于他们是在线还是回顾，但是，