Remembering the future: Age-related differences in schoolchildren's prospective memory depend on the cognitive resources employed by the task

Recent research indicates that schoolchildren's prospective memory (PM) success and age-related improvements vary as a function of the cognitive resources employed by different PM task requirements. In a sample of eighty-two 6- to 10-year-olds, we aimed to investigate age-related differences in PM, looking for specific contributions from executive functions (updating, inhibition, shifting) and episodic future thinking (EFT). A second aim was to investigate whether these contributions vary as a function of PM type (event- or time-based), while also exploring their convergence across tasks measuring the same PM abilities. Age-related improvements were found across all task versions. However, on PM tasks requiring more self-initiation processes and strategic monitoring, age-related progress was accounted for by children's executive resources (updating, inhibition) and/or specific time-monitoring abilities. Although associated with PM scores on the same type of tasks, EFT did not predict children's PM when accounting for age and/ or other cognitive processes.