Abstract: The age-prospective memory (PM) paradox in laboratory and naturalistic conditions widely exists. When the tasks were set in naturalistic conditions, there were no age differences in the performance of prospective memory, and in some occasions older adults even performed better, possibly resulted from personality, life styles, task materials and reminders. When the tasks were set in laboratory conditions, the performance of prospective memory tended toward age-related decline, possibly resulted from recollection memory load, the type of cues, and the need of strategy control processing in tasks.The age-prospective memory (PM) paradox may result from the social characteristic of environment and intention or the strategy of allocating the cognitive resources. At last we provide future researches with advices about the control of subjects, task materials, and the exploration of motive causes.

Key words: prospective memory, naturalistic conditions, laboratory conditions, age-PM paradox