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This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the purpose of this book, which is to summarize some of the robust and replicated research findings concerned with the effects of aging on cognitive abilities, and to discuss potential causes and consequences of these effects. It presents a comparison of cognitive aging with physical aging, and discusses tests used to assess cognitive ability. The chapter then discusses the two broad themes about cognitive aging that have been apparent from the beginning of research on this topic. The first theme is that different cognitive variables have different patterns of relations with age; and the second is that there is large variation in cognitive performance across people at any given age, such that the differences associated with age correspond to only a small proportion of the total variation which exists across people.

This chapter explores converging and diverging issues between genetic and neuroimaging science research and clinical applications. It shows how genetics is intensely communal and familial, while the study of the central nervous system is more focused on the individual. Nonetheless, we learn how the ‘therapeutic gap’ gene hype, and the risk of scientific over-promising from both can lead to advances that may make situations worse before they make them better.

The accumulation of multiple chronic illnesses with advancing age is well established, and characterizes a significant proportion of the elderly population. This chapter discusses how this is commonly dealt with in cognitive aging research. The absence of a comprehensive view about cognition-associated diseases may result in failures to take into consideration health conditions that are critical to cognitive functioning, sometimes selectively, and this may be particularly true in the study of old age. Different approaches to the definition of health and disease are discussed, followed by examples of research explicitly focused on the relation between health-related variations and cognitive performance. Finally, possible ways to expand this research are proposed. The main message of the chapter is the need for clarity about what it means that participants in cognitive aging research are rarely free of disease.

This chapter suggests that most cognitive theories of memory are cast in a manner that does not satisfactorily posit both what repetition priming is and why it is that way. Often, theories are cast in terms of abstract entities that are more analogous to computer programming functions than to the functions of brain subsystems. In the abstract approach, theories concern broad functional concepts of the sort reflected by the typical organization of cognitive research topics in textbooks. Alternatively, theories can be cast in terms of neurocomputationally dissociable processing subsystems, the functions that they accomplish, their interactions, and the neurally plausible mechanisms that perform those functions and interactions. In this approach, theories can do more than organize past research findings and generate new questions; they can do so in a manner that highlights how the phenomena stem from independently derived properties and principles of how brains implement memory and how brain-like models simulate memory.

This chapter presents an overview of cognitive research on visual attention from the pioneering studies in the 1950s to the mature psychological field of today. Classical empirical phenomena and findings are described alongside theories that have shaped the field. The long-standing debate between serial and parallel models of visual attention is given special emphasis. The chapter also describes the signal detection and biased choice theories, which represent early attempts at describing attention and categorization in mathematical terms.

Though there are many approaches to working memory, the author introduces this chapter by emphasizing that his approach is empirically driven and relies primarily on the methods of cognitive memory research, influenced strongly by neuropsychology. A brief historical background, from the two-component view of short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) up to the modal model made known by Atkinson and Shiffrin, is illustrated. A multicomponent working memory is then suggested by the author which proposes a four-component working memory: the central executive, the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the episodic buffer. These components are discussed in detail in this chapter.

This chapter discusses some practical implications of space to reason theory for other areas of cognitive research and draws some general conclusions about imagination, spatial representation, and reasoning on the basis of the theories, studies, and ideas. It also discusses how preferred layout models are related to the issue of human rationality. The chapter further explains what the theory has to do with the thoughts of a Neanderthal woman. It concludes with the visual theory of reasoning, stating that it can glorify the role of visual images in understanding the human thought process but that there is a need for a more rational view of imagination to develop a proper understanding of what drives our thinking and reasoning.

Chapter 1 offers a survey of humanity’s best efforts to understand humor: what it is, how it works, and why it is important. It examines the most prominent theories and beliefs, describes recent research by cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, and applies their findings to a wide sampling of film comedies from around the world. Beginning with the Western distinction between comedy and tragedy, it explores these concepts as two visions of human existence, drawing on key thinkers of the West (Plato, Hobbes, Kant, Bergson, Freud, Bakhtin) and East (Zhuangzi, Confucius, Al-Jahiz, Bharata Muni) as well as modern clinical studies to arrive at a rich, cross-cultural understanding of comedy and what it means for us as biologic and social beings.