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15 - Memory and Aging in Social Contexts

from Part III - Aging in a Socioemotional Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2020

By
Michelle L. Meade ,
Vladimir A. Perga  and
Katherine M. Hart
Edited by
Ayanna K. Thomas  and
Angela Gutchess
Ayanna K. Thomas
Affiliation:
Tufts University, Massachusetts
Angela Gutchess
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Older adults often collaborate with others to recreate past events and reminisce. In the current chapter, we discuss the patterns of gains and losses associated with social memory and aging specifically as they relate to research on collaborative remembering and social contagion. Within the collaborative remembering literatures, we focus on different methods of measuring group and individual memory performance and the role of partner familiarity. Within social contagion, we focus on age differences in susceptibility to socially suggested false memories and how perceptions of age influence the effects. Across literatures, there is some disagreement on precisely how and when collaboration benefits and/or disrupts older adults’ memories. However, there is strong agreement that collaboration influences memory and that social influence is an important contextual factor on older adults’ cognition.

Keywords

collaborative memorycollaborative inhibitionsocial contagionmemory conformity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Aging
A Life Course Perspective
 , pp. 281 - 298
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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