title: Prospective remembering in younger and older adults: role of the prospective cue.
abstract: In these studies, adult age differences in event-based prospective memory were examined using an adapted version of G.O. Einstein and M.A. McDaniel's (1990) task. In Experiments 1-3, we varied prospective cue specificity by assigning a specific target word or an unspecified word drawn from a given taxonomic category. In Experiment 3, we manipulated cue typicality by presenting low or high typicality target words. Results yielded positive effects of cue specificity on prospective performance. Age effects occurred when high typicality target words served as prospective cues (Exps. 1 and 3), but younger and older adults performed comparably with moderate and low typicality words (Exps. 2 and 3). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that age accounted for a small but significant amount of variance in prospective memory, although the contribution of age was substantially reduced after statistically controlling for recognition memory. Implications of these data for current views on prospective remembering are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge 70803-5501, USA. pskatie@lsu.edu
authors.forename: K E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Cherry
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: S S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Simmons-D'Gerolamo
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Pinkston
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Griffing
authors.forename: W D
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Gouvier
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012044:Regression Analysis