Young and middle-aged participants were asked to describe actions they intended to perform during the two weeks following the interview without referring to any memory aids. At the end of this period, they were asked whether those intended actions had actually been performed or not. Results showed that though middle-aged participants were less likely to recall intended actions without memory aids, there was no significant agerelated difference in forgetting to perform those actions. To understand why people forget to perform their intended actions, face-to-face interviews were conducted with the participants to examine several aspects of the actions (e.g., importance, forgetfulness) and the use of memory aids. Analyses suggest that young adults overestimate their own prospective memory skills in recalling intended actions properly in their daily contexts. Through regular social activities over years, people gradually obtain a dayschema, which helps them spontaneously recall intentions without salient cues. Time-based prospective memory in daily contexts seems to be based on hour-based prospective remembering, which may be functionally different from the well-known interval-based prospective remembering.

特集 : 小嶋祥三君退職記念
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