ABSTRACT
Working memory (WM) holds information we have just received and supports the programs that use selected parts of our current take on reality to guide us through what we need to do next. In this sense, WM selects and holds information on which we base our best guesses at what our immediate future holds and our plans of how we shall cope with it. The earliest prospective memory experiments were simple laboratory studies of how well people can do things they have been asked to do precisely when they have been asked to do them. These found differences in efficiency at “time-based” and “event-based” tasks. Older people always perform less well than young adults on boring and seemingly pointless laboratory tasks such as learning lists of words. This is not just because these tasks are tedious and exasperating but rather because we do become less efficient at learning anything new as we grow older.
