ABSTRACT
Kvavilashvili et al.’s (chap. 6, this volume) comprehensive review of the development of PM in children begins by noting the paucity of studies in this area (an unusual case of development lagging aging research). They attribute this to the
(mistaken, they argue) assumption that developmental work is unlikely to tell us anything new about PM and also to the undoubted challenges in collecting PM data from young children. (To these explanations, one could perhaps add that it might be easier to justify the study of aging PM to funding bodies because of the obvious importance of everyday PM tasks, such as remembering to take medication and pay bills on time, to living independently in old age.) Nevertheless, there clearly has been some success in designing PM paradigms suitable for children to address these methodological issues, many of which have been encountered previously in the aging literature (see Maylor, 1993b, 1996b; Uttl, 2005, for summaries). For example, it seems to me that the failure of the “feeding the dog” scenario described by Kvavilashvili et al. illustrates the need to avoid the PM requirement becoming a vigilance or monitoring task in the sense that it occupies working memory or conscious awareness throughout the retention interval (see Graf & Uttl, 2001, on the distinction between PM “proper” and vigilance/monitoring).
