TY - JOUR
T1 - The sounds of memory
T2 - Extending the age-prospective memory paradox to everyday behavior and conversations
AU - Haas, Maximilian
AU - Mehl, Matthias R
AU - Ballhausen, Nicola
AU - Zuber, Sascha
AU - Kliegel, Matthias
AU - Hering, Alexandra
N1 - This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant number 100019_165572).
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Objectives: Around the turn of the millennium, the "age-prospective memory (PM) paradox" challenged the classical assumption that older adults necessarily evidence a marked decline in PM functioning. As previous investigations highlighted ecological validity to be a potential explanation, the present study sought to extend established approaches by using novel real-world assessment technologies to examine PM unobtrusively in everyday-life conversations.Method: Next to laboratory PM tasks, real-life PM performance of 53 younger adults (19-32 years) and 38 older adults (60-81 years) was assessed from three sources: Over nine days, participants completed an experimenter-given naturalistic task, a diary-based approach assessing self-assigned intentions, as well as an ambulatory assessment with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a device that unobtrusively samples ambient sounds to detect spontaneous speech production related to (lapses in) everyday PM.Results: Older adults showed lower performance in laboratory PM only for the time-based task, and performed either equally well as or even better than younger adults in everyday PM. With regard to PM performance as captured in real-life ambient audio data, younger adults talked more frequently about PM than older adults, but no significant difference between younger and older adults was found for speech related to PM errors.Discussion: Findings confirmed older adults' preserved PM performance in everyday life across different indicators with increasing ecological validity. Furthermore, as a novel method to assess conversational PM in everyday life, the EAR opens new insights about the awareness of PM lapses and the communication of intentions in real life.
AB - Objectives: Around the turn of the millennium, the "age-prospective memory (PM) paradox" challenged the classical assumption that older adults necessarily evidence a marked decline in PM functioning. As previous investigations highlighted ecological validity to be a potential explanation, the present study sought to extend established approaches by using novel real-world assessment technologies to examine PM unobtrusively in everyday-life conversations.Method: Next to laboratory PM tasks, real-life PM performance of 53 younger adults (19-32 years) and 38 older adults (60-81 years) was assessed from three sources: Over nine days, participants completed an experimenter-given naturalistic task, a diary-based approach assessing self-assigned intentions, as well as an ambulatory assessment with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a device that unobtrusively samples ambient sounds to detect spontaneous speech production related to (lapses in) everyday PM.Results: Older adults showed lower performance in laboratory PM only for the time-based task, and performed either equally well as or even better than younger adults in everyday PM. With regard to PM performance as captured in real-life ambient audio data, younger adults talked more frequently about PM than older adults, but no significant difference between younger and older adults was found for speech related to PM errors.Discussion: Findings confirmed older adults' preserved PM performance in everyday life across different indicators with increasing ecological validity. Furthermore, as a novel method to assess conversational PM in everyday life, the EAR opens new insights about the awareness of PM lapses and the communication of intentions in real life.
KW - ADULTHOOD
KW - Ambulatory assessment
KW - Ecological validity
KW - Electronically activated recorder
KW - Everyday cognition
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128506542&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1093/geronb/gbac012
DO - 10.1093/geronb/gbac012
M3 - Article
C2 - 35092421
SN - 1079-5014
VL - 77
SP - 695
EP - 703
JO - The Journals Of Gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences And Social Sciences
JF - The Journals Of Gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences And Social Sciences
IS - 4
ER -