ABSTRACT
Cognitive styles are the habitual ways that individuals attend to, remember, frame, and interpret information provided by their environment. The classification of a variable as cognitive indicates most generally that the construct involves the way a person tends to see the world; from their general outlook to their specific response to stimuli. We argue in this chapter that cognitive also includes processes as diverse as the ways individuals choose what areas of life are most salient to them, how people perceive time, and how they intentionally structure and perceive their social relations and social network. Thus, we take cognitive in its most general sense as we try to understand the role of cognitive variables in processes of successful aging.
