The Effect Of Cognitive Style And Age On Prospective Memory

Prospective memory (Prom) is a type of memory in which an individual must remember to perform an extended activity at some designated point in the further, For example: remembering to call somebody tomorrow morning. Prospective memory is one special type of long-time memory. It is different from retrospective memory (Retrom)which concerns the memory taken place in the part time, for example, remembering what had learned yesterday at school.Before 1970S, prospective memory were unknown, but it is boiling with ideas and findings recent years, In the introduction the definition features and type of prospective memory difference between prospective memory and retrospective memory . research method of prospective memory the factors that influence a subject's performance in prospective memory tasks mechanisms and application of prospective memory the importance of prospective memory research, and so on, are introduced.According the articles before, we find that not only there were a few studies on prospective memory about children,but also these research were different in design and result. So we employ the typical experimental paradigm to research the developing track of prospective memory.In addition,personality is an important factor that influences prospective memory. The field dependence-independence(FDI) is an important cognitive style, it reflects the individual difference in terms of the autonomy of external or internal referent.' From the recent studies concerned with FDI,researchers argue that field-dependence (FD) individuals develop the meta-cognitive which is skilled more early and more efficiently than field-independence (FI) individuals , especially the attention monitor, congnition restructure,etc.The superiority of FD individuals in meta-cognitive will benefit the performance of prospective memory.So the FDI might be a factor that influence the prospective memory.The present research studied the effect of FDI, type of task and age on prospective memory.The design of the experiment was a 2(cognitive style:FD;FI) X 2(type of Prom:event-based;time-based) X 3(age:primary school junior middleschool;senior middle school students)mixed factorial design that included the between subjects variables of FDI and age, the within-subject variable of type of prospective memory.The result indicated:(l)Field-independent subject performed significantly better than Field-dependent subjects.(2)The performance of event-based Prom, significantly better than the time-based Prom (3)There is no significant correlation among primary school students junior middle school students and senior middle school students. (4) The performance of prospective memory needs cognitive resource,we agree with Noticing+Search model and Multiprocess Framework.