Prospective memory in children: The effects of age and task interruption.

Kvavilashvili, Lia; Messer, David; Ebdon, Pippa · 2001 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1037//0012-1649.37.3.418

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Summary

This study investigates the developmental trajectory of prospective memory (PM) in children, specifically examining the effects of age and task interruption. While retrospective memory research is extensive, PM—remembering to perform an intended action in the future—has been understudied in children despite its critical role in everyday functioning. The authors aimed to address three key issues: the impact of age on event-based PM, the effect of interrupting an ongoing activity to execute a PM task, and the relationship between PM and retrospective memory performance. The research comprised three experiments involving children aged 4, 5, and 7 years. Participants engaged in an ongoing task of naming picture cards while being instructed to hide specific target cards (animals) when encountered. Task interruption was manipulated by placing target cards either in the middle of a stack (requiring interruption of the naming task) or at the end of a stack (allowing completion of the ongoing task before executing the PM intention). Experiment 1 tested 5- and 7-year-olds; Experiment 2 expanded the sample to include 4-year-olds and increased statistical power; Experiment 3 controlled for potential positional confounds and added a retrospective recall test to assess the correlation between the two memory types. The results consistently demonstrated a significant main effect of task interruption across all experiments. Children performed significantly better in the no-interruption condition compared to the interruption condition, indicating that the need to halt an ongoing activity substantially impairs PM performance. This effect was robust and explained a considerable amount of variance in performance. Age also had a significant main effect, with 7-year-olds outperforming 4- and 5-year-olds. However, the effect size for age was small, explaining only a minor portion of the variance. Crucially, Experiment 3 found no significant relationship between prospective and retrospective memory scores, suggesting these memory systems operate independently in children. These findings support theoretical models positing that task interruption imposes high attentional demands that disrupt prospective remembering. The study highlights that while PM improves with age, the developmental gains are modest compared to those seen in retrospective memory. The lack of correlation between PM and retrospective memory challenges assumptions that they share common developmental mechanisms. Practically, the results suggest that strategies to assist children’s PM should minimize the need to interrupt ongoing activities, thereby reducing cognitive load and improving the likelihood of successful intention execution.

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• prospective memory interruptions