Symposium on the Development of Prospective and Retrospective Memory

Convenor: Lia Kvavilashvili (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

Discussant: Stephen Ceci (Cornell University, USA)

Retrospective memory refers to remembering information from the past and has been intensively studied for more than a hundred years. In contrast, prospective memory refers to remembering to carry out intentions in future (e.g., remembering to convey a message, or take a medication) and has been studied for only a couple of decades. Although remembering future intentions is a common everyday task that even young children are expected to perform there is little research on the developmental aspects of prospective memory. The aim of the symposium was to increase awareness among developmental psychologists of the distinction between prospective and retrospective memory, and to draw their attention to interesting possibilities for research in a relatively new but expanding field.

The Symposium consisted of two review papers, one on retrospective and one on prospective memory development, which were followed by three empirical papers reporting the most recent developmental research on prospective memory. The review paper on the development of retrospective memory, presented by Sue Gathercole (University of Bristol), concentrated on the key components of retrospective memory (short-term, episodic and autobiorgraphical) and was crucial in providing an appropriate context and reference point to the subsequent presentations on prospective memory. Lia Kvavilashvili (University of Hertfordshire) reviewed the limited developmental research on prospective memory. She also provided relevant background information on the processes involved in prospective memory together with different types of tasks and experimental paradigms that have been developed to investigate them. The empirical presentations covered a wide range of theoretically and practically important topics. For example, Judi Ellis (University of Reading) talked about the effects of incidental reminders on prospective memory performance in adults and young children. The presentation by David Messer et al. (University of Hertfordshire) concentrated on the effects of age and task interruption on prospective memory in 4-, 5-, and 7- year old children. Julie Dockrell et al. (South Bank University) reported an interesting correlational study on the nature and relationship of event- and activity-based prospective memory tasks in a sample of seven to eight year old children with word finding difficulties.

The main message that emerged from these presentations is that (i) young children can be quite good at remembering certain prospective memory tasks and (ii) developmental trajectory of prospective memory appears to be different from that of retrospective memory. In light of these findings, it is obvious that further research in this area is highly desirable. Finally, a discussant Stephen Ceci (Cornell University), an invited speaker at the conference, presented an interesting summary of the Symposium which was followed by a thought-provoking and lively discussion.