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Updated: Jun 20, 2026
09:13
A Real-world What-Where-When Memory Test
Published on: May 16, 2017
An Internet study of prospective memory across adulthood.
Robert H Logie1, Elizabeth A Maylor
1Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Psychology and Aging
|September 11, 2009
Summary
Prospective memory, the ability to remember future intentions, declines linearly with age. Internet studies effectively revealed these age-related deficits in prospective remembering across a large adult age range.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Aging Research
Background:
- Prospective memory (PM) is crucial for daily functioning, involving remembering to perform intended actions in the future.
- Previous research on age-related PM deficits has often been limited by laboratory settings and smaller sample sizes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate age-related differences in prospective memory performance using a large-scale Internet-based study.
- To examine the influence of target presence at encoding and temporal uncertainty on prospective remembering across the adult lifespan.
Main Methods:
- A large sample (N=73,018) of adults aged 18-79 completed an online prospective memory task.
- Participants were instructed to remember to perform an action (click a smiley face) at a later time.
- Experimental conditions varied target presence during encoding and the temporal expectation of the target.
Main Results:
- Prospective remembering improved with prior target exposure and temporal uncertainty across all age groups.
- A linear decline in prospective memory performance was observed from young adulthood onwards, mirroring working memory decline.
- Internet methodology proved effective in detecting age-related PM deficits in a single-trial task outside traditional lab settings.
Conclusions:
- Age-related deficits in prospective memory are evident even in simple, single-trial tasks.
- Internet-based research offers a powerful tool for studying cognitive aging in large, diverse populations.
- Understanding prospective memory decline is vital for maintaining independence and quality of life in aging adults.
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