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Abstract Prospective memory represents the ability of remembering to carry out an intended action in the future .So far,a large number of literature had proved that the event-based prospective memory ability of preschoolers kept increasing with age . By contrast,few studies had explored the trajectory of event-based prospective memory in school-age children and the results had not reached an agreement . Besides,the existing research results indicated that executive function was correlated with cognitive style and prospective memory respectively .The previous studies also verified the effect of cognitive style on adolescent's event-based prospective memory performance .In this paper,the school-age children were assessed systematically to conduct an in-depth analysis of this effect .Apart from the individual factor,the environmental factor of cues reminding is a special variable to promote the performance of event-based prospective memory in all probability . However,the available discussions failed to interpret its mechanism .Based on the above reasons,the present study has explored the effects of cognitive style and cues reminding on event-based prospective memory in school-age children from the viewpoints of individual factor and environmental factor,which would be the first attempt in the related field .Not only would this clear the developmental trajectory of event-based prospective memory in school-age children,but also could test the prospective memory theories from the development perspective . The whole experiment was composed of two steps .Firstly,two groups of the participants—field-independent group/field-dependent group were divided into two subgroups:one with the use of Embedded Figures Test (EFT),the other one without EFT .Each group consisted of one hundred 8-,10-,and 12-year-old students .In the second step,the classic paradigm of prospective memory was applied to test the event-based prospective memory performance in school-age children . The cues reminding information was offered or not during the break . The data analysis showed that:(1)the prospective memory performance continued to move forward with the growing of school-age children|(2)younger (8-and 10-year olds)field-independent children did better in finishing the event-based prospective memory task but 12-year-olds could complete this task successfully regardless of their cognitive style|(3)children,especially who were in the field-dependent group,performed better in the prospective memory task under cues reminding condition . In sum,cognitive style,as an individual factor,played an important role on the development of children's event-based prospective memory . What's more,external cues reminding could improve event-based prospective memory performance significantly as well as compensate the shortage of event-based prospective memory processes in field-dependent school-age children .In addition,combined with the data of ongoing task,this study indicated that 8-year-old children still could not distribute or coordinate their attention resources very well compared with 12-year-old children . Finally,the field-dependent children achieved better ongoing task performance at the cost of their prospective memory performance .The results supported multiprocess theory .In the follow-up research,it is necessary to control the difficulty of ongoing task perfectly to investigate the more detailed development trajectory of school-age children's prospective memory across the participants with successive ages .
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2015, Vol. 1 
