Human Memory: A Constructivist View
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0124080871
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
While memory research has recently focused on brain images and neurological underpinnings of transmitters, Human Memory: A Constructivist View assesses how our individual identity affects what we remember, why and how. This book brings memory back to the constructivist questions of how all the experiences of an individual, up to the point of new memory input, help to determine what that person pays attention to, how that information is interpreted, and how all that ultimately affects what goes into memory and how it is stored. This also affects what can be recalled later and what kind of memory distortions are likely to occur.
The authors describe constructionist theories of memory, what they predict, how this is borne out in research findings, presenting everyday life examples for better understanding of the material and interest. Intended for memory researchers and graduate level courses, this book is an excellent summary of human memory research from the constructivist perspective.
- Defines constructivist theory in memory research
- Assesses research findings relative to constructivist predictions
- Identifies how personal experience dictates attention, interpretation, and storage
- Integrates constructivist based findings with cognitive neuroscience
a boy goes to visit with his father. In one version, the father is a doctor and the boy is exposed to a grisly situation involving graphic surgery; in the other the father is a mechanic and the boy sees some difficult auto repair. The findings have been that the emotional scenes produce superior recall of the central, important information, but weaker recall of the peripheral information, as compared to a control condition in which no strongly emotional scenes were present. By “peripheral” here
here is that the concept itself is defined and determined by the typical features. A variety of other approaches have also been explored (Osherson, Smith, Wilkie, Lopez, & Shafir, 1990; Smith & Medin, 1981; Smith, Shoben, & Rips, 1974). The alternative, identity, view posits that we conceptualize all tables as belonging to the same concept because each table has certain properties that qualify it as a table, such that all exemplars of this concept do possess something in common (the
psychology. (H. A. Ruger, Trans.) Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Dover; 1885/1964. 159. Eichenbaum H, Cohen NJ. From conditioning to conscious recollection: Memory systems of the brain. New York: Oxford University Press; 2001. 160. Ekstrand BR. Effect of sleep on memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 1967;75:64–72. 161. Ellis AW. Errors in speech and short-term memory: The effects of phonemic similarity and syllable position. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 1980;19:624–634.
would score this as a ? (A memory also intruded at this point concerning a bus ride from the airport into New York that I knew at once, from its content, derived from Trip 2, and rejected.) A final idea concerning the holiday was this. On the plane, my son was carrying a drum that he had bought in Tangier: a blue and white drum (3). It had not been put in the luggage—too awkward (3.0). But, again, I could not determine whether this memory came from Trip 1 or Trip 2, and would therefore score all
might fade and grow holes, but a brown house cannot turn white. Psychologists worked primarily within this (empiricist/copier) tradition into at least the latter half of the twentieth century. Today it has been established that experienced memories do change. I know this all too well—having moved a large clock tower across a street, in recollection, and in fact altered a medium-sized house not too distant from the road to a small house tucked well down into a valley. The defense today of the