Do elderly couples have a better prospective memory than other elderly people when they collaborate

A naturalistic study investigated how memory tasks affected group productivity for two individuals working in three kinds of group constellations: old married couples, old non-friend pairs, and nominal groups of two individuals working on their own. The retrospective memory task was to recall episodic information given on a visit to a university campus. The prospective memory task was to remind the participants of actions to be performed during the visit. The prospective memory tasks were event-based or time-based. The delay or retention interval was also manipulated. In addition, an interview on how the elderly handled remembering during daily life was included. The results suggest that: (1) dyads suffered from collaboration relative to the predicted potential, replicating earlier research; old married couples did not reduce the same productivity loss as clearly as friends did in former studies; the couples who claimed that they used a transactive memory system, however, achieved the same productivity as the nominal pairs (i.e. the predicted potential; (2) the task effects produced unexpected results, some of which could be accounted for by the naturalistic setting used. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.