From the lab to the classroom: Improving children's prospective memory in a natural setting

Cottini, Milvia; Palladino, Paola; Basso, Demis · 2024 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.1111/bjep.12682

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Summary

This study investigates the ecological validity of encoding strategies designed to improve children’s prospective memory (PM), specifically testing whether episodic future thinking (EFT) and performance predictions enhance real-life PM performance in a classroom setting. While previous laboratory research demonstrated that EFT (imagining the future task) and predicting one’s own performance could improve PM, it remained unknown if these strategies were effective in naturalistic environments where tasks are more complex and retention intervals are longer. The researchers aimed to determine if these interventions could support school-aged children in remembering intentions, such as delivering messages or completing homework, which are critical for academic and social success. The study involved 121 children aged 7 to 9 years from 12 classes in six primary schools in Northern Italy. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups: control, prediction, EFT, or a combined EFT + prediction group. The PM task required children to deliver a letter to their parents and return it to school the following day. In the prediction group, children answered questions about their likelihood and confidence of success. In the EFT group, teachers guided children to visualize the entire process of delivering and returning the letter. The combined group received both interventions. Performance was scored on a 0–7 scale based on autonomous recall and timeliness, with parent reports on everyday memory failures collected via the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire for Children (PRMQ-C) to validate findings. Results indicated that encoding strategies significantly enhanced PM performance compared to the control group. However, the pattern of effectiveness differed from laboratory findings: predicting PM performance was the most effective strategy, with children in the prediction group significantly outperforming those in the control, EFT, and combined groups. In a binary analysis of success versus failure, children in the prediction group were 17 times more likely to successfully complete the task than controls, whereas EFT alone did not yield a statistically significant improvement over the control group. Additionally, parent-reported everyday PM errors were significantly associated with task success, suggesting that baseline memory abilities influence performance. Age differences between groups were controlled for, confirming that the intervention effects were not artifacts of developmental variance. These findings highlight the importance of studying PM interventions in natural settings to ensure ecological validity. The study suggests that while EFT is beneficial in controlled laboratory environments, performance predictions may be more robust for enhancing real-life prospective memory in children. This implies that encouraging metacognitive monitoring and self-assessment could be a more practical and effective educational strategy for supporting children’s ability to remember intentions in daily life. The results inform educational practices by identifying specific, low-cost interventions that teachers can implement to reduce memory failures in school-aged children.

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• prospective memory interruptions