Effects of incidental reminders on prospective memory in children

Ryder, Nuala, Kvavilashvili, Lia and Ford, Ruth (2022) Effects of incidental reminders on prospective memory in children. Developmental Psychology, 58 (5). pp. 890-901. ISSN 1939-0599

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Abstract

Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to carry out intended actions in the future (e.g., posting a letter on the way to school or passing on a message) and is important for children’s independent functioning in daily life. This study examined, for the first time, the effects of incidental reminder cues on children’s PM. Five- and 7-year-old children (n = 160, 50% female, predominantly White from lower middle to middle-class families) had to remember to put cards with a picture of a dog into a box (placed behind the child) every time they finished working on an activity book with a line drawing on each page (activity-based PM task). Additionally, the picture presented on the last page of each activity book was manipulated to examine the role of incidental reminders on PM. Results showed that 7-year-old children significantly outperformed 5-year-olds on the PM task despite age-equivalence of performance on the ongoing visual search task. For both age groups, an incidental reminder (a line drawing of a dog) that was similar to the target of the PM task (a card with a colour picture of a dog) significantly improved PM compared to the no reminder condition (a line drawing of a flower), while reminders related to the PM action (a line drawing of a box) or semantically related to the target of the PM task (a line drawing of a cat) were not effective. These findings have important practical and theoretical implications and open up interesting avenues for future research.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Keywords:	prospective memory
Faculty:	Faculty of Science & Engineering
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic User
Depositing User:	Symplectic User
Date Deposited:	18 Feb 2022 10:37
Last Modified:	13 Jun 2022 14:02
URI:	https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/707337

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