ABSTRACT
I n preparing this chapter it was helpful to reflect back on my time as a graduate student from 1969–1974 at Carnegie Mellon University, working with Bill Chase from 1970 onward. Those were heady days in the development of the new field of cognitive psychology, with drafts of chapters of Newell and Simon's (1972) book Human Problem Solving circulating in the department and a new collaboration on determinants of chess skill developing between Bill Chase and Herb Simon. It was in fact that chess project, coupled with my interest in chess as an avid amateur player, which prompted me to make the fateful decision to shift supervisors and work with Bill. However, it was an accidental finding a few years after leaving CMU, age effects on memory but not on problem solving in bridge players (Charness, 1979), that started me on the path toward a life-span developmental perspective on cognition.
