Remembering to remember in adulthood: A population-based study on aging and prospective memory

Age-related differences in prospective memory were investigated in a population-based sample of healthy adults aged 35 to 80 years (N = 1,000). Participants were screened on a variety of demographic, psychological, and biological variables, including (a) subjective and objective assessment of health status; (b) information about socioeconomic background; and (c) extensive examination of basic cognitive functions. The prospective memory task was incidental and relatively realistic in the sense that the participants were asked to remind the experimenter to sign a paper after a 2-hour test session. Results indicated an overall deterioration of prospective memory performance across age. Furthermore, age-related differences in prospective memory were observed even when differences in the selected background variables were taken into consideration.