ABSTRACT
A n important focus in the literature on prospective memory (PM) concerns the impact of adult aging on this important memory skill. In Brandimonte, Einstein, and McDaniel’s (1996) previous book on PM, Maylor (1996) reviewed the available literature on the effects of aging on a range of PM tasks and concluded that, for PM tasks in a naturalistic setting, “Older adults are at least as good as younger adults (and sometimes better)” (p. 182). In contrast, on laboratorybased PM tasks, “there is not a single laboratory study in the literature in which the elderly signicantly outperformed the young, although there are some studies in which older and younger subjects did not differ. In contrast, there are several reports of age-related impairments” (p. 184).
