Unaided, many people are notoriously poor recalling and carrying out intentions, prospective memories (PM), that have been delayed by a period of time; an effect that seems to worsen with age. Age effects research in prospective memory, however, have produced conflicting results; some reporting age invariance and others reporting poor performance in older adults. The aim of the experiments reported here was to investigate this debate from the dual perspectives of output monitoring (OM) and executive functions (EF). Output monitoring refers to the evaluative phase of prospective memory processing when a person interrogates memory to determine the status of an intention (e.g. still to do, completed, cancelled, postponed etc.). The principal aim was first to determine whether and when age effects occur in PM and OM and then examine the relationship between PM/OM performance and executive function. The main research consideration was whether, and to what extent is PM performance related to, or influenced by deficits in output monitoring.

This thesis examines the similarities and differences between two widely-used immediate memory tasks: immediate serial recall (ISR) and immediate free recall (IFR). Until recently these two tasks were explained by separate theories, but recent researchers have encouraged greater integration by showing considerable similarities under identical list lengths (LL) and methods. Eight experiments are presented in three chapters. Chapter 2 examines strategy use in the two tasks. Participants were shown not to use LL-specific strategies in IFR (Experiment 1) or ISR (Experiment 2). Indeed, encoding strategy use was similar in both tasks: participants showed no effect of test-expectancy (Experiment 3). These findings show that participants encode ISR and IFR in similar ways, irrespective of knowledge of the LL, and that differences between the tasks are due to retrieval. Chapter 3 examines why participants tend to initiate IFR of short lists with the first word in the list. I looked at three putative mechanisms for generating the primacy effect in IFR: covert rehearsal (Experiment 4), selective attention (Experiment 5), and temporal distinctiveness (Experiment 6). I found that no manipulation abolished primacy. Chapter 4 showed similar effects of modality (Experiment 7) and temporal isolation (Experiment 8) on ISR and IFR when examined under the same methodology. In summary, this thesis has shown that when LL is equated ISR and IFR are more similar than previously thought. Due to the growing evidence that both tasks are underpinned by common memory mechanisms I conclude that there is a need for greater theoretical integration between the two tasks. I relate my results to different theories of ISR and IFR, and provide a verbal description of a preferred explanation of the data.

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The differences between bipolar-diagnosed and non-clinical control participants were investigated for three memory processes: mood-dependent memory, mood-congruent memory and autobiographical memory perception. Fifty-eight participants generated six autobiographical memories after receiving a positive mood induction and rated them in a number of ways. They also saw four inkblots. After receiving the same or a contrasting mood induction, participants recalled and re-rated the autobiographical memories and attempted to recognise the inkblots. There were significant differences in inkblot recognition amongst the groups, showing mood-dependent memory. Mood congruent judgment was observed for some of the memory ratings. This study paves the way for further investigation into memory differences of this sort in mood disorders.

This thesis investigates subjective states of awareness in memory for emotional information following Tulving's (1985) dual-memory model in which feelings of 'remembering' (including specific recollection of the encounter with the item) index episodic memory and feelings of 'knowing' (memory but without any specific recollection) index semantic memory. Rajaram's (1996) proposal that distinctiveness of processing increases feelings of 'remembering' while fluency of processing increases feelings of 'knowing' was examined. Seven studies utilising news stories with varying emotional content were conducted following the assumption that emotional content would increase both distinctiveness and fluency of processing (cf. Oschner 2000). If emotional information invokes greater distinctiveness of encoding, this would be expected to result in enhanced episodic encoding and increased 'remembering'; greater fluency of processing would be expected to result in enhanced semantic encoding and increased feelings of 'knowing'. The studies broadly support the hypothesis that emotional news stories increased feelings of 'remembering'; however, emotion did not systematically affect feelings of 'knowing'. Earlier research using different materials found increased 'remembering' with enhanced distinctive/elaborative processing. Three studies manipulating depth of processing, level of attention at encoding and repeated study trials replicated these effects with both emotional and neutral news stories. Using news stories as a study material facilitates investigation of the hypothesis that conditions promoting learning (transfer to semantic memory) would lead to increased feelings of 'knowing' (Conway, Gardiner, Perfect, Anderson & Cohen, 1997). This hypothesis was supported for both emotional and neutral stories. The viability of exploring memory awareness for stories varying in emotional content was demonstrated and the results support the view that emotional distinctiveness increases feelings of remembering. It is argued that feelings of remembering depend on both distinctive and fluent encoding processes. It is suggested that emotional fluency at the encoding stage makes emotional information more readily available for episodic encoding and thereby fosters feelings of remembering.