Revista de Psicologia e Psicoterapia
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Effects of Age on Performance of Prospective Memory Tasks Differing According to Task Type, Difficulty and Degree of Interference

Perez Enrique, Meilan Juan JG, Carro Juan, Sanchez Jose A and Arana Jose M

In this study we compare the performance of older and younger adults in prospective memory tasks. Our aim is to understand the differences between the performances of cognitively unimpaired older individuals and young people in prospective memory tasks using both events based and time based tasks, as well as to determine whether the prospective memory interference effect in the ongoing task differs according to the age samples. A further objective is to analyze whether the difficulty of the PM task (event-based versus time-based) affects the degree of interference in the ongoing task. Using four different event based prospective memory tasks, we found no differences between the young people and the cognitively unimpaired older individuals (even when increasing the difficulty of the ongoing task), neither in the time-based tasks or the PM interference effect. It was concluded that deterioration in performance on tasks involving the recall of pending intentions is not a problem associated with age but rather with another series of deficits in the cognitive processes.