ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a brief overview of the primary patterns of performance across three key paradigms that serve as tools for investigating the fate of suspended and completed event-based prospective memory (PM) intentions (Suspended Paradigm, Finished Paradigm, and Repeated Cycles Paradigm). The paradigms are suspended paradigm, finished paradigm, and repeated cycle's paradigm. The purpose of the suspended paradigm is to investigate the fate of a PM intention that is temporarily irrelevant. The finished paradigm investigates the fate of an intention that is finished and therefore no longer relevant. A central theme in cognitive aging research is that normal aging is characterized not by ubiquitous decline but instead by relative sparing of some cognitive processes compared to others. As with younger adults, there has been interest in strategies that may reduce commission error risk for older adults in the four-target condition.