INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF METAMEMORY IN PROSPECTIVE MEMORY OF SCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN

Prospective memory (PM) develops considerably during childhood and especially around 7 and 8 years of age. Developmental advances in PM during this age period have been primarily linked to executive functions (EFs), such as inhibitory control, set shifting, working memory (WM) and monitoring. However, recently it has been suggested that also metamemory (MM) would be potentially involved. To date, only few studies have investigated the relation between MM and PM. The aim of the present work was to investigate the effect and the role of procedural MM in PM of 7- and 8-year-old children by using different methods (i.e., performance predictions, postdictions, and self-reports concerning strategy-use). Moreover, the role of declarative MM as well as EFs has been examined. In Study 1 we investigated whether and how children’s PM performance on two different tasks (categorical vs. specific) would benefit from making performance predictions. Results replicated findings with adults, showing that, although not accurate, performance predictions improved performance on a categorical and more resource-demanding PM task but not on a specific and more automatic PM task. This prediction-advantage was associated to an ongoing task (OT) performance slowing, suggesting that strategic monitoring processes were enhanced. Both declarative MM and WM significantly contributed to overall PM performance. In Study 2, we adopted a prediction-postdiction paradigm to evaluate children’s performance judgments before and after performing a specific PM task. In addition, children were asked whether and which strategy they used to perform the task. While performance predictions were not related to and had no effect on subsequent PM performance, replicating previous studies, postdictions were quite accurate. Moreover, strategy-use resulted to be the main predictor of children’s PM performance, showing that using an active strategy not only supported successful retrieval of the PM task, but also enhanced monitoring processes. Finally, Study 3 examined longitudinal relationships between MM, PM and EFs in children at the age of 7 and 8 years. The same experimental procedure of Study 1, including only the categorical PM task, has been adopted. Results showed that children’s performance improved on all measures after one year. However, the effect of performance predictions on PM performance disappeared. PM improvements at Time 2 could not be explained by any of the included variables except for PM performance at Time 1. Taken together, these experiments are the first exploring and revealing the important relationship between MM and PM in school-aged children by using different methods such as performance predictions, postdictions and self-reports related to strategy-use. Theoretical and methodological implications emerging from these experiments as well as the importance of considering MM aspects when studying PM in children will be discussed.