The Role of Extrinsic Rewards and Cue-Intention Association in Prospective Memory in Young Children

Sheppard, Daniel Patrick; Kretschmer, Anett; Knispel, Elisa; Vollert, Bianka; Altgassen, Mareike · 2015 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0140987

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Summary

This study investigates the development of prospective memory (PM) in young children, specifically examining the roles of extrinsic rewards and cue-intention association. PM involves executing planned intentions in the future, a skill critical for daily functioning that develops significantly during early childhood. While previous research suggests that executive functions drive PM development, the Multiprocess Framework posits that performance can also rely on automatic, reflexive processes triggered by strong associations between cues and intentions, or by high motivation. This research addresses a gap in the literature by testing these two factors—cue-intention association and promised extrinsic rewards—in children aged 5 and 7, a period marked by increased PM demands as they start school. The researchers employed a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial design with 79 German-speaking children (39 five-year-olds and 40 seven-year-olds). Participants performed an ongoing task (OT) of naming picture cards for a puppet while remembering to respond differently to specific target pictures (saying "juice"). The strength of the association between the target cue and the intention was manipulated within-subjects: a high-association condition (e.g., seeing a fruit and saying "juice") and a low-association condition (e.g., seeing an animal and saying "juice"). Motivation was manipulated between-subjects, with half the participants promised a surprise gift for good PM performance. PM performance was measured by the number of correct responses, while OT performance was tracked via the percentage of correctly named cards. The results revealed significant main effects for both age and reward, but no effect for cue-intention association. Seven-year-olds outperformed five-year-olds in PM tasks. Furthermore, children promised a reward performed significantly better than those without a reward incentive. Contrary to the reflexive-associative hypothesis observed in adults, the level of cue-intention association did not influence PM performance; children performed equally well in both high- and low-association conditions. No significant interactions were found between age, reward, and cue-association. Regarding the ongoing task, older children and those in the reward condition named a higher percentage of cards correctly, indicating that the reward manipulation did not impair OT performance. These findings suggest that extrinsic rewards are a potent motivator for improving prospective memory in young children, potentially by encouraging the allocation of limited executive resources to the PM task. The lack of a cue-intention association effect implies that the reflexive-associative mechanism, which facilitates automatic retrieval in adults, may not yet be fully developed or functional in children of this age. Instead, young children likely rely more heavily on strategic monitoring and motivation-driven resource allocation. The study highlights the importance of motivational factors in supporting PM development in early childhood and suggests that interventions aimed at improving PM in young children should consider the use of incentives rather than relying solely on cue distinctiveness or semantic association.

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• prospective memory interruptions