Prospective memory in preschool children: Influences of agency, incentive, and underlying cognitive mechanisms

• We examined prospective memory (PM), executive functioning, and theory of mind.
• More children completed PM tasks of high incentive than low incentive.
• Performance did not differ on tasks requiring “remembering” versus “reminding.”
• Theory of mind independently predicted success on low-incentive PM tasks.

Prospective memory (PM) is remembering to perform an action in the future and is crucial to achieving goal-directed activities in everyday life. Doing so requires that an intention is encoded, retained during a delay interval, and retrieved at the appropriate time of execution. We examined PM ability in preschool children by manipulating factors related to agency and incentive. We further explored how metacognition, executive functioning, and theory of mind—factors known to account for individual differences in PM—influenced performance on these PM tasks. A sample of 31 preschool children were asked to carry out a delayed intention or to remind an adult to carry out an intention that was of high or low incentive to the children. Findings indicated that individual differences in theory of mind were related to individual differences in preschoolers’ performance on low-incentive PM tasks, independent of executive functioning contributions, whereas individual differences in executive functioning were related to performance on the high-incentive tasks. These findings suggest that changes in theory of mind and executive functioning are important to consider in models of PM and that different PM tasks (e.g., high vs. low incentive) may involve different cognitive requirements for young children.