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PART II - HOW DO MEMORIES CONSTRUCT OUR PAST?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Helen L. Williams  and
Martin A. Conway
Edited by
Pascal Boyer  and
James V. Wertsch
Pascal Boyer
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis
James V. Wertsch
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

Ever since Bartlett, psychologists have insisted that memories are constructed, that they should not be seen as simple and passive preservation of experiential information (Bartlett, 1932). Mental representations are not the direct outcome of physical stimuli that impinge on our sense organs; they are an interpretation of those stimuli in terms of particular concepts of objects in the world around us. In the same way, memory requires an elaboration of information about the past, including traces of experience, within meaningful schemata. Fine, but what does that mean in practice? One thing that it does not mean is that memories are by nature inaccurate, produced at will by the subject or by some goal-driven mechanism. Accuracy and elaboration are orthogonal dimensions, so that more elaboration does not mean that memories are not faithful to experience. Memories are constrained but also created by schemata – but how does that actually occur? That is the central question addressed by most experimental research on memory – so that giving a proper answer to the question, How are memories constructed? should take us through an exhaustive tour of memory research.

The best starting point is with the most salient and obvious kind of memories, namely autobiographical memories, information about our own past. For a long time, this domain of personal memory of experience used to be a rather marginal field in the scientific study of memory. This may seem odd.

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Chapter
Information
Memory in Mind and Culture , pp. 29 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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References

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