REMEMBERING TO REMEMBER - ADULT AGE-DIFFERENCES IN PROSPECTIVE MEMORY

Age-related differences in prospective memory were examined in a labor atory-based task in which younger and older adults performed different actions whenever a semantically defined target word occurred in the c ontext of a free-association task. Requirements for self-initiated ret rieval operations were manipulated by presenting target words that wer e typical or atypical instances (e.g., milk vs ink) of a given semanti c category (liquid). The results showed that age differences ill prosp ective memory were accentuated when atypical items,were used as target s, but reduced when highly typical targets were presented. Furthermore , age differences were not limited to remembering when to perform acti on, but young subjects also showed better performance in remembering w hat was to be done. These findings indicate that the magnitude of age difference in prospective memory interacts with task complexity, and s upport the view that prospective memory failures are accentuated in ta sks with high resource demands on self-initiated retrieval operations.