The aim of the present thesis was to investigate old couples' memory collaboration to try to improve the understanding of how memory collaboration influenced the memory performance of the couples. This was done in three studies. Collaborative group dimensions were studied: different social aspects, such as friendship, age, and interaction strategy. The principal comparison was between an actual collaborative dyad and the sum of the two individuals' memory potential, i.e., the predicted potential.

The main conclusions of the studies presented, concerning dyads of elderly, revealed that negative net effects existed for old couples in memory performance for the episodic tasks, but not for the semantic tasks ( of. Andersson, 1996). The memory performance patterns for old couples in common did not differ from results for younger adults, but for certain group constellations of elderly, the memory performance in episodic tasks reached the nominal (pooled) productivity of the couples. The interaction patterns seemed to both positively influence the possibility of cuing and to minimise the retrieval interference in the couples' memory collaboration in episodic tasks.

In a qualitative analysis (Study III) it was found that certain couples had perceived how to collaborate in an optimal way, where both spouses took mutual responsibility for the memory tasks, and also were aware of their dependence on each other. Both the good possibilities to cue each other and the quality of the relation seemed to facilitate the memory collaboration of the couples, and the basis of compensating for potential memory deficits, which could help them to keep up the memory performance to the potential performance level of the couple (cf. Dixon, 1999; Dixon & Cohen, 2001).

The explanation for the collaboration effects obtained could not solely be explained by cognitive theories. There seemed to be a social aspect which should be included to fully understand the complex matter of collaborative memory. A combination of cognition and individual reflection (cf. Ardelt, 2000) in a context of multiple and interacting minds (Staudinger & Baltes, 1996) seemed to be reason for the collaborative success in the memory tasks for the elderly couples.