Is the multiprocess approach suitable to elucidate age-differences within prospective

The multiprocess framework by McDaniel and Einstein (2000) proposes several factors that determine if event-based prospective remembering depends on automatic or strategic processes. While automatic retrieval of an intended action does not require cognitive processing, cognitive resources are needed in strategic retrieval of a prospective task.

Moreover, cognitive resources and cognitive capacity develop in childhood and across adulthood (Craik & Bialystok, 2006). Thus, the multiprocess approach can provide a subsidiary framework to integrate possible underlying mechanisms of event-based

prospective memory development. The present results support this notion, as factors of the multiprocess framework were found to affect the development of prospective remembering across the lifespan (see Figure 12).

Figure 12. The multiprocess framework (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000). Lined areas indicate factors of the framework that were examined in the present thesis. Plain lines indicate a significant relation between the factor and prospective memory development, dashed lines indicate that no age-specific relations were found. PM = Prospective memory

Task importance

Individual differences

Cue associativity

Ongoing task

PM Cue

Planning

Cue distinctiveness

Ongoing task

absorption Cue

focality

Already in early childhood, the importance of the prospective memory task seems to be a relevant factor for prospective remembering. While younger pre-schoolers were

outperformed by older children in a task without direct benefit for themselves, performance of younger and older pre-school age children was almost equal in a task that was perceived as important due to a direct reward. The results are partly in line with previous findings (see Somerville et al., 1984, but also Guajardo & Best, 2000). Thus, performance may be

enhanced in young children by applying a task that induces a high self-perceived importance.

In contrast, performance in a task that was not perceived as important was rather low. In conclusion, older children seem to be more effective in tasks that demand strategic processing because of superior cognitive resources. Yet, younger children were able to allocate resources in order to apply strategic retrieval processes if the prospective memory task was perceived as important and desirable. Therefore, older pre-school age children appear to be already capable to permanently remember intended actions, even when being only “normal” motivated. Thus, the present results revealed that task importance, a factor proposed by the multiprocess approach (McDaniel and Einstein, 2000), indeed seems to be related to age-differences of prospective remembering in pre-school age.

In later childhood, i.e. school age, prospective memory development appears to continue (see Chapter 4.2.1). Results of the Study 2 indicated that characteristics of the task can lead to the differences in performance of younger and older school children. Here, the focalitiy of the prospective cue affected performance of children in this age-range. Thus, the multiprocess approach can contribute to exploration of prospective memory development. A focal presentation of the external cue increased prospective memory performance in school age children in contrast to applying a prospective cue outside of the actual processing. Yet, the benefit of a focal cue was higher for young school children compared to older children.

Thus, automatic retrieval as facilitated by focal presentation appears to attenuate age

differences due to low cognitive demands. In contrast, the distinctiveness of the target cue and

the ongoing task absorption did not affect younger and older children differentially.

Therefore, varying prospective memory performance in school age children seems to be partly dependent on the ability to deal with the (non-)focality of the target cue, as younger children are assumed to have less cognitive resources (e.g. Gathercole, 1998) , and thus are more affected by nonfocal cue presentation than older children.

In adulthood, the present results indicated that factors of the multiprocess framework can account for the paradoxical pattern of previous studies (Henry et al., 2004). First, in the laboratory task setting (i.e. task regularity and task focality) affected prospective memory performance, especially in older adults. If a task was within focal processing or had to be performed regularly older adults could achieve an equal performance level as younger adults, presumably due to automatic retrieval processes. Second, perceived importance of the task seems to contribute to age-differences in a naturalistic setting. Superior prospective memory performance of older adults in tasks that have to be performed outside of the lab seems to (at least partly) arise from low motivation of younger participants. If younger adults did not perceive the task as important, they remembered to perform the task less often than older adults, possibly due to allocation of cognitive resources. Yet, performance of younger adults significantly increased in a rewarded task, which might arise from focussing cognitive resources on the prospective memory task and therefore enabling strategic retrieval processing. In contrast, older adults’ performance remained stable. Thus, age differences outside of the laboratory might be due to motivational differences of the age groups.

Taken together, these present results indicate that factors of the multiprocess

framework by McDaniel and Einstein (2000) 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. These findings have implications for the multiprocess view and developmental prospective memory research.

Originally, the multiprocess frameworks aimed at delineating general principles in

prospective memory. The development of prospective remembering was not the focus of the authors. However, the present thesis indicates that the multiprocess approach is not only suitable to explain age-differences in adulthood but also in childhood. Factors of the

multiprocess framework seem to affect prospective memory performance across the lifespan and therefore, this approach might serve as foundation for a lifespan theory of the

development of prospective memory. To date research on the development of prospective remembering is only marginally or domain-specific theory driven because a comprehensive theoretical concept is not available. Thus, the results of the present thesis suggest the multiprocess framework as a starting point for proceeding steps towards a capable developmental theory of event-based prospective memory across the lifespan.