ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on general themes in an attempt to provide an integration of the primary contributions with the larger literatures of everyday and laboratory cognition. The methodological basis for distinguishing between everyday and laboratory cognition concerns the relative merits of naturalistic vs. controlled observation. Despite the divisive rhetoric, a consensus appears to be emerging that both naturalistic and controlled method should be used in the study of cognition. Most psychologists who study cognition seem mainly to be using controlled methods. In the evolution of research on everyday cognition the bases appear to have played different roles in life-span psychology and in the larger domain of cognitive psychology. Theoretical differences appear to have played a prominent role in life-span research. The serial-parallel distinction is important in life-span research because of the roles of both effortful, serial processing and automatized, parallel processing in theorizing at every stage of the life span.
