Answer to Question 1
Collaborative cognition is at work when two or more people work together to solve a cognition task. Research indicates that collaborative cognition enhances older adults' performance on a variety of memory and problem solving tasks. Older adults can collaborate on story recall and problem solving. When they do, their performance is better than that of older adults in individual settings. In fact, on a recall task, older married couples performed just as well as younger couples.
Answer to Question 2
When older adults were placed in a storytelling situation in which they were asked to learn and then retell from memory a story to a young child, their retellings of the story had more detail and were more fluent than those of younger adults. It is possible that this superior performance was motivated by a context in which they wanted to produce an interesting and coherent story for the child. Context can enhance what is most salient to the individual. In summary, context is important when examining cognitive functioning and change over time.