Prospective memory refers to the ability to remember to carry out delayed intentions, more precisely, to remember to initiate and execute an intended action at some point in the future. The development and progression of prospective memory across the lifespan is still heavily under debate. Only few studies have so far investigated prospective memory development in childhood, revealing an inconsistent pattern. In adulthood, studies in the laboratory and naturalistic studies showed paradoxical results with age deficits in the laboratory and age benefits in naturalistic tasks. Up to now, no conceptual model has been suggested to guide research on prospective memory development across the lifespan. Thus, the present work examined the effect of central factors from the multiprocess framework (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000) on the development of prospective memory in four different age-groups: pre-schoolers, school-age children, young and old adults. The first study explored the role of task motivation in age differences in prospective memory performance across the pre-school age-range. No main effect of age or motivation in prospective memory performance was found, yet a significant interaction, indicating that for younger children motivation or task importance may help allocating the available resources to the task elements of interest. Evidence from the second study indicated that 9-10 year old school children outperform 6-7 year old school children on a measure of prospective memory, and that retrieval-based factors (ongoing task absorption, cue salience, cue focality) systematically influenced performance. Of particular importance for possible developmental mechanisms was the finding of an age x cue focality interaction, suggesting that age effects may be modulated by cue focality. The third study examined the effect of task setting in a laboratory procedure and the effect of motivation in a naturalistic procedure on prospective memory performance in young and older adults. Results from the laboratory prospective memory procedure revealed significant age-related decline for irregular tasks but not for regular and focal tasks. In addition, in the naturalistic procedure, the age benefit was eliminated when young adults were motivated by incentives. Results from the present work indicated that already pre-school age children were able to remember to perform intended actions and this ability increased across school-age. In adulthood, the results revealed a decline with age on a pure performance level. Yet, older adults may be able to compensate for basic cognitive impairments if task conditions reduce the need for controlled attention. Furthermore, the present work suggest, that factors of the multiprocess framework may indeed affect age-differences in prospective memory performance throughout the lifespan, as cue focality and task importance were related to prospective memory development in children and adults. Thus, the multiprocess approach might serve as foundation for a lifespan theory of the development of prospective memory.

Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2008. / Directed by Stuart Marcovitch; submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jan. 28, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 38-43).

Diss. Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2007.

Prospective memory (PM) refers to a person’s ability to remember to do something in the future. It is a complex behaviour that is essential for the daily functioning of young and old alike. Despite its importance in everyday life, few studies have sought to examine PM in a naturalistic way and even fewer have done so using school-aged children. The current study aimed to understand a particular form of time-based PM (TBPM), general TBPM, in children through the use of a novel naturalistic paradigm. In addition, the study aimed to add to the current PM literature by including an analysis of the circumstances surrounding a child’s prospective remembering. Results demonstrated that general TBPM was not significantly related to the parent-report Prospective Retrospective Memory Questionnaire for Children (PRMQC) or to the Memory for Intentions Screening Test for Youth (MISTY). Interestingly, general TBPM was not found to significantly relate to WM either. Descriptive analyses of the qualitative data demonstrated that no trigger rehearsals were most often responsible for children’s successful PM remembering. In contrast, when children forgot to complete their PM tasks, they most often reported being too busy with other things as the reason. The current findings provide preliminary support for the existence of a new sub-type of TBPM. They also call into question the utility of using measures like the MISTY and PRMQC to evaluate the ecological validity of new PM task paradigms. Consequently, future research should focus on validating current PM measures before using them to evaluate the ecological validity of new ones. Finally, it is also believed that the inclusion of qualitative measures assessing the contexts of PM retrieval have important implications for the effective development of future interventions for children who experience PM difficulties. / Graduate / 0621 / 0633 / 0620 / kdtalbot@uvic.ca

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of the ability to multitask in children along with other executive control processes that likely underlie goal-directed behavior in novel situations. 35 children, ages 7-11, completed an experimental multitasking paradigm, the Children’s Multiple Activities Game (CMAG), and an existing measure, the Six Parts Test (SPT) as well as two working memory and inhibition tasks and a prospective memory task. Results indicated that multitasking ability improves across this age range and is related to a number of executive abilities. Performance on the CMAG was related to a number of executive abilities, while the SPT was unrelated to these measures. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the development of this ability in children. Findings will be discussed in terms of how this ability develops in relation to cognitive processes that are crucial and account for its variation.

Objectives: The ability to remember to carry out future intentions (prospective memory or ProM) has been shown to be impaired in individuals with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). However, it is not known whether such deficits extend to people with milder TBI. This study sought to investigate the status of event-based ProM in a sample with a wide range of TBI severity. Furthermore, it proposed to determine whether perceptually salient cues and the formation of implementation intentions, shown to be beneficial in other populations, are also helpful for people with TBI. A detailed error analysis was performed, and the relationship of objective ProM performance to subjective ProM and to scores on other cognitive tests was investigated in an attempt to clarify the mechanisms underlying ProM performance post-TBI. Method: The sample consisted of 20 individuals who sustained a mild (n=10) or severe (n=10) TBI at least 6 months earlier and 20 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy adults below the age of 55. The groups did not differ in terms of level of pain or substance abuse; however, the TBI group endorsed more symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory-lI (BDI-II) and on the Beck Anxiety Inventory. They completed two event-based ProM tasks, a game entitled Navigating Your Week (NYW) and the Prospective Remembering of Actions and Sentences (PROAS). Each measure was designed to create intentions that would prompt different actions in response to various cues. They also completed the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) to assess subjective evaluation of memory, the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and cued recall tasks to assess retrospective memory, and Digit Span Backward to measure working memory. Results: Participants with TBI scored significantly below controls on the NYW game, even after controlling for BDI-II scores, and the two TBI subgroups performed similarly. Participants with TBI made more ProM failures and loss of content errors than controls on the NYW game. The groups performed similarly on the PROAS when it was the second ProM task administered. Although salient cues increased the frequency of responding upon cue presentation, they did not increase response accuracy and thus, did not result in greater fulfillment of intentions. The formation of implementation intentions (lid not enhance the ability to carry out previously formed intentions. The TBI group's performance on the NYW and on the PROAS was associated with their scores on Digit Span Backward and on cued recall measures. The PROAS was also related to delayed recall on the RAVLT; the association between the NYW and the RAVLT did not reach statistical significance. The TBI group endorsed more prospective and retrospective memory problems on the PRMQ as compared to the control group, but their self-ratings were not significantly related to their ProM performance. Conclusions: Individuals with TBI fulfilled fewer of their intentions than controls, particularly on the NYW game, because they failed to respond to cues and had more difficulty remembering the content of their intentions. Their reduced ProM was not fully attributable to depressive symptomatology and was not related to their subjective ProM complaints, despite their greater ProM concerns as compared to controls. Deficits may be attenuated when ProM situations emphasize more automatic retrieval as compared to strategic monitoring processes. Working memory and retrospective memory may both contribute to ProM status after TBI. Cue saliency did not help TBI participants to carry out more intentions; however, it reduced the frequency of ProM failures. The lack of implementation intention effects may be related to study design characteristics. The NYW game appears to he a sensitive, valid, and reliable tool that could he useful in a rehabilitation setting.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-152). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR29500

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of the ability to multitask in children along with other executive control processes that likely underlie goal-directed behavior in novel situations. 35 children, ages 7-11, completed an experimental multitasking paradigm, the Children’s Multiple Activities Game (CMAG), and an existing measure, the Six Parts Test (SPT) as well as two working memory and inhibition tasks and a prospective memory task. Results indicated that multitasking ability improves across this age range and is related to a number of executive abilities. Performance on the CMAG was related to a number of executive abilities, while the SPT was unrelated to these measures. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the development of this ability in children. Findings will be discussed in terms of how this ability develops in relation to cognitive processes that are crucial and account for its variation.

A fundamental question of human existence is how much control we have on our behaviour. This dissertation aims to add to our understanding of cognitive control by characterising how a particular failure of performance, Goal Neglect (GN), is affected by different forms of complexity manipulations. In Chapter 2, I develop a new task to test GN and unlike previous studies, I manipulate complexity qualitatively by altering the instructional cues - the cues instructing the participant to shift to a different rule set. GN was sensitive to this kind of complexity manipulation and this is linked to a failure in recognizing the significance of the instructional cues. In Chapter 3, I propose a new entropy-like measure to quantify the temporal clustering of GN and use this to test the differential temporal patterns that are predicted by two theoretical models of GN. The results suggest that both models are likely to be operant, but with their relative dominance being different across time: GN early on in the task appears to be mostly driven by failures which are “task model” like, whilst GN which manifests later on is better aligned with the “monitoring” account. Chapter 2 also revealed that GN can be sensitive to manipulations of complexity during task performance, which motivated the question of whether previously published studies suggesting the contrary, were perhaps due to insufficient complexity. Hence, in Chapter 4, using the new GN task, I investigate this further. Overall, the results were mixed and indicated that complexity does not appear to affect GN unless the complexity manipulation is more closely associated to the critical event. Throughout this dissertation, I refer to models and empirical evidence from the Prospective Memory (PM) literature given the apparent similarity between PM and GN experimental paradigms. In Chapter 5, I take this further and investigate how PM failures and GN are different, if at all, with the broader aim to integrate what are otherwise isolated domains. I found a mixture of null findings which suggest that it is not entirely clear if GN and PMf reflect different capacities. Nonetheless, while investigating the differences between GN and PMf, a much more interesting question emerged with respect to what structural features of a task predict different signatures of GN-like and PMf-like errors. The key finding to this theory-neutral approach was a general rule about task structure: a combination of extended practice and low frequency of critical events predict both a larger amount of errors and with more of these occurring late in the task. Overall, this research has shed further light on task conditions that may result in different error signatures and that may reflect different cognitive resources.

abstract: A converging operations approach using response time distribution modeling was adopted to better characterize the cognitive control dynamics underlying ongoing task cost and cue detection in event based prospective memory (PM). In Experiment 1, individual differences analyses revealed that working memory capacity uniquely predicted nonfocal cue detection, while proactive control and inhibition predicted variation in ongoing task cost of the ex-Gaussian parameter associated with continuous monitoring strategies (mu). In Experiments 2A and 2B, quasi-experimental techniques aimed at identifying the role of proactive control abilities in PM monitoring and cue detection suggested that low ability participants may have PM deficits during demanding tasks due to inefficient monitoring strategies, but that emphasizing importance of the intention can increase reliance on more efficacious monitoring strategies that boosts performance (Experiment 2A). Furthermore, high proactive control ability participants are able to efficiently regulate their monitoring strategies under scenarios that do not require costly monitoring for successful cue detection (Experiment 2B). In Experiments 3A and 3B, it was found that proactive control benefited cue detection in interference-rich environments, but the neural correlates of cue detection or intention execution did not differ when engaged in proactive versus reactive control. The results from the current set of studies highlight the importance of response time distribution modeling in understanding PM cost. Additionally, these results have important implications for extant theories of PM and have considerable applied ramifications concerning the cognitive control processes that should be targeted to improve PM abilities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2015