Prospective memory in children: the effects of age and task interruption

Prospective memory (PM), remembering to carry out a task in the future, is highly relevant to children's everyday functioning, yet relatively little is known about it. For these reasons the effects of age and task interruption on PM were studied in 3 experiments. Children aged 4, 5, and 7 years were asked to name pictures in stacks of cards (the ongoing task) and to remember to do something when they saw a target picture (the PM task). Significant age differences were identified, but age explained only a small amount of variance. As predicted, children in the no-interruption condition performed significantly better than those who had to interrupt the ongoing activity in order to carry out the PM task. An additional finding was that no relation was detected between performance on prospective and retrospective memory tasks. Taken together, these findings provide support for current models of PM and identify ways to assist children's PM.