Prospective memory and aging: the effect of perceptual salience
Date
1999
Authors
Cohen, Anna-Lisa
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Abstract
The effect of perceptual salience on prospective memory (PM) performance was examined for three age groups. Young, young-old, and old-old adults completed a visual search task with embedded PM instructions. On each trial, participants indicated the position of a target letter in a letter string, unless either of two pre-specified letters (PM cues) were encountered. Each PM cue was associated with a specific response. Perceptual salience was manipulated by spatially displacing a single letter (i.e., PM cue, target, ordistractor). This manipulation modulated performance of the prospective component realizing that a PM response should be made) but not the retrospective component (recalling the correct
response when a PM cue was encountered). Young adults successfully recalled a higher proportion of PM intentions than young-old and old-old adults. However, there were no significant differences between young-old and old-old PM performance.