ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book defends the best way to improve our understanding of cognitive aging is to take a strategy approach. This consists of studying age-related differences and changes in strategic variations such as the repertoire, distribution, execution, and selection of strategies and using methods which are suitable for assessing these variations. The book focuses on showing how this strategy perspective enhances our understanding of cognitive aging. It presents a brief overview of the main age-related effects on human cognition. The book focuses on how the strategy perspective can shed light on these phenomena, as well as uncovering others which would otherwise go unrecognized. It reviews the main goals of the psychology of cognitive aging. The book presents the overall trends in how cognitive performance changes with age, before looking at how various factors modulate these trends. It discusses observed individual differences in cognitive aging.
