The current study examined age differences in the social contagion of memory paradigm developed by Roediger, Meade, and Bergman (2001). In the social contagion paradigm, participants are exposed to the erroneous memory reports of a confederate after viewing a series of schematically arranged household scenes. Age differences were examined at two levels. First, participant age was manipulated in order to determine whether older adults were more susceptible to socially encountered misinformation than young adults. Second, the age of the source of misinformation was manipulated to determine how perceptions of the source may influence contagion. The results indicated that suggestions of older adult confederates impact participants' memory reports less than the suggestions of young adults in free recall. However, the mechanism for this effect differs in terms of participant age. Young adult participants appear to discount the suggestions of older adult confederates, while older adult participants appear to devote less processing to the collaboration of the older confederate. Additionally, older adults were not more susceptible to social contagion than were young adults, even when given more time to view the stimuli.

Decades of research have demonstrated that normal aging is accompanied by cognitive change. Much of this change has been conceptualized as a decline in function. However, age-related changes are not universal, and decrements in older adult performance may be moderated by experience, genetics, and environmental factors. Cognitive aging research to date has also largely emphasized biological changes in the brain, with less evaluation of the range of external contributors to behavioral manifestations of age-related decrements in performance. This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge cognitive aging research through the lens of a life course perspective that takes into account both behavioral and neural changes. Focusing on the fundamental principles that characterize a life course approach - genetics, early life experiences, motivation, emotion, social contexts, and lifestyle interventions - this handbook is an essential resource for researchers in cognition, aging, and gerontology.

We remember in social contexts. We reminisce about the past together, collaborate to remember shared experiences, and remember in the context of our communities and cultures. This book explores the topic of collaborative remembering across a wide range of fields, including developmental, cognitive, and social psychology.

Everyday Memory and Aging is a comprehensive handbook which touches virtually every aspect of current everyday memory research and methodology as they relate to aging. This book demonstrates that the results of divergent approaches to the study of everyday memory and aging frequently dovetail, and it widens significantly the scope of investigation and know- ledge in the field.

There are many ways to approach the understanding of consciousness. Questions about these ways have occupied philosophers and metaphysicians for centuries. During the early growth of cognitive science the problem of consciousness remained taboo, but an increasing number of studies have either implicitly or explicitly begun to bear on its nature. These have been inspired by a number of different different original questions, and focus on a variety of different empirical phenomena. Thus, studies of implicit memory, subliminal processing, strategic versus automatic processing, allocation of attention, and differences between information processes in the awake versus dreaming state all share a common assumption of a particular quality or state -- awakeness, awareness, alertness, namely consciousness -- that somehow can be distinguished from another type of state or states in which the subject is not aware of the information being processed. What distinguishes the cognitive psychological and cognitive neuroscience approach to the question of consciousness from that of philosophy and metaphysics is scientific methodology: a set of tools that permit the empirical study of a phenomenon in an objective and reproducible way. Recent developments in both the empirical and theoretical methodologies of these fields have made it possible to begin to study the phenomenon associated with -- if not directly underlying -- consciousness in a scientific fashion. This volume tries to resolve the difficulties associated with the scientific investigation of consciousness. The intent is to explore the extent to which consciousness can be the target of direct scientific inquiry, to get on the table some of the relevant work, and consider the degree to which this research can help inform our understanding of consciousness. It brings together a group of cognitive and neuroscientists to share relevant recent research in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience and to determine whether any new strategies for the scientific pursuit of this question can be developed. A long-term goal is the development of a unified understanding of consciousness, scientific as well as philosophical perspectives. This volume takes the first step toward building the necessary local bridges.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.