Prospective memory performance across adolescence.
In the present study, the authors explored age differences in event-based prospective memory (PM) across adolescence. The tasks consisted of an ongoing task (OT; i.e., personality questionnaire items, math problems) and an embedded prospective task that required participants to remember to make a special response whenever they encountered a PM cue (i.e., a negative word in the OT). The 341 participants (aged 13-22 years) revealed a significant main effect of age, which indicated better PM performance of young adults compared with teenagers. Moreover, when emphasizing the OT versus the PM task, teenagers' PM profited from PM emphasis more than did young adults' PM. The authors discuss the data in the context of limited executive capacity as a factor influencing cognitive development across adolescence.
Wang
Lijuan
L
Department of Psychology, University of Jilin, China.
Kliegel
Matthias
M
Yang
Zhiliang
Z
Liu
Wei
W
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D012153:Retention, Psychology