The age prospective memory paradox within the same sample in time-based and event-based tasks

Abstract

The present research investigated the age prospective memory (PM) paradox by testing the performance of the same participants on laboratory and naturalistic PM tasks. Younger, middle-aged, and older adults performed three tasks (time-based, event-based with focal cue, and event-based with nonfocal cue); first in the laboratory, then in the context of their everyday lives. Additionally, the social importance of PM tasks was manipulated in the laboratory. As expected, age-dependent declines on the laboratory tasks were reversed in the naturalistic tasks. Middle-aged adults performed as well as younger adults in the laboratory and as well as the elderly outside of the laboratory. When the social importance of laboratory tasks was stressed, the performance of younger adults fell. In addition, older adults showed higher self-reported commitment to the naturalistic tasks than both younger and middle-aged adults. Findings are discussed in the context of possible explanations for the age PM paradox.