The effects of memory cue and Memory Aid on prospective memory in older and younger adults

Two experiments were conducted to examine the aging effect on prospective memory tasks and ongoing tasks. Experiment 1 was conducted to investigate the relationship between event-based prospective memory with different types of prospective cues and memory aid for both younger and older subjects. Experiment 2 was conducted to investigate the relationship between time-based prospective memory with different types of prospective cues and memory aid for younger and older subjects. Various prospective memory tasks and ongoing tasks were manipulated to examine the characteristics of the memory cues and memory aid to the target actions, the nature of the ongoing task, and age differences. The results showed that both performance of EBPM and TBPM was affected by the Memory Aid. The performance of older subjects improved with the use of memory aid compared to those not using memory aids. The performance of EBPM was also affected by memory cues, and a single memory cue was helpful for the older subjects.