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In.Valsiner, J. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of culture and psychology . New York: Oxford University

Press, expected late 2011 or early 2012

CultureinConstructiveRememberingBrady Wagoner

ABSTRACT. The present chapter explores unconventional ways of thinking about what itmeans to remember and how precisely culture is involved in this process. Since Plato the

dominant metaphor for conceptualizing memory has been that of a spatial storage. In

contrast to this, Sir Frederic Bartlett advanced an alternative temporal metaphor ofremembering as construction. If we push his metaphor further we can say memory

construction is done by agent using cultural tools such as language and narrative. In this

chapter, Bartletts theory is contextualized, elucidated, critiqued and developed with thehelp of a number of other thinkers. Its ultimate aim, however, is to beyond Bartlett to

arrive at thoroughgoing culturally inclusive psychological theory of remembering.

KEYWORDS: Memory, construction, Bartlett, metaphor, schema, narrative

I would have you imagine that there exists in the mind of man a block of wax When we wish

to remember anything we have seen, or heard, or thought in our own minds, we hold the wax

to the perceptions or thoughts, and in that material receive the impression of them as fromthe seal of a ring. Whatever is so imprinted we remember and know so long as the image

remains. Plato, Theatetus, 191DE

Remembering is not the reexcitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It

is an imaginative reconstruction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole

active mass of organized past reactions or experience, and to a little outstanding detail which

commonly appears in image or language form. F.C. Bartlett, 1932, p. 213

The above quotations describe two radically different ways of thinking about what it means

to remember: in the first, memory is understood as a spatial storage of sensoryimpressions, while in the second it is a wholly constructive activity involving imagination,feeling and past experience. For most of psychologys short history it has tended toward

the first perspective. This is unfortunate because it is only the second perspective thatprovides us with an adequate starting point to bring culture into the process of

remembering. To be fully consistent, from a constructivist perspective, means taking mind

out of the head and situating it in the unfolding interaction between an organism and its

social and physical environment. In so doing we can begin to conceptualize the ways in

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which past experience is accessed, formed and transformed through social cultural means,

in interaction with actual or internalized others.

The argument of the present chapter can be put bluntly: Rather than simply cuingsomething internal, social others and cultural tools participate in and constitute the very

process of remembering, by providing the cultural framework or scaffold through which

memories are constructed. To argue this thesis, the present chapter first examines some ofthe conceptual problems encountered by storage theories of memory by way of a historical

analysis of some memory metaphors. It then go on to explore Bartletts alternative theory

of remembering and how it can be developed to give the social and the cultural a centralplace in the process. To this end a number of classic and contemporary sources are also

borrowed from: George Herbert Meads theory of the social act is used explain how it is

possible get out of our selves in remembering. Maurice Halbwachs and other theorists of

collective memory help to contextualize remembering at the societal level, in the projectsof different social groups. Lastly, Vygotsky and recent work in cultural psychology provide

a means of giving agency back to the remembering individual while at the same timekeeping them situated in the broader social cultural world to which they belong.

BRINGINGMETAPHORSOFMEMORYTOLIFEAll knowledge is ultimately rooted in metaphorical (or analogical) modes of perception and

thought. Thus, metaphor necessarily plays a fundamental role in psychology, as in any

other domain.(Leary, 1990, p. 2)

Metaphors involve a dynamic interaction (Black, 1962) or schematizing (Werner and

Kaplan, 1963) between the objectin question and the metaphorical vehicleused to describe

it. In other words, the object is constructed in terms of the vehicle. For example, in the

metaphor argument is war the aggressive and oppositional aspects of argument areforegrounded while others are hidden. Using an alternative metaphor, such as argument

is dance, new properties of the object can be seen (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). In science

the constructive nature of metaphor can be highly generative of new ways of thinking

about and exploring a scientific object (Danziger, 1990a)take, for example, Neils Bohrsrevolutionary idea that the structure of the atom might resemble the solar system. At the

same time, however, metaphors can impede scientific advancement when we forget thatthe way we describe our object is metaphorical and begin to believe in its literal truth.

Theorists call this a deadmetaphoras opposed to a livingmetaphor, which has the potential

to revive our creative capacity for seeing the world anew by allowing us to take a newperspective on an object (Ricoeur, 1977; see also Burke, 1935, on perspective by

incongruity).The idea that the memory is a place in the mind/brain, where experiences are

stored, has become a dead metaphor, and as such creates obstacles for thinking about

memory differently. In this section, I will bring metaphors of memory back to life by

investigating their historical origins and analyzing what is revealed and hidden with thedescription of memory as storage. This will then open up the possibility of developing

fruitful alternative metaphors of memory that explore aspects of memory concealed by the

storage metaphor. To accomplish the task of historically analyzing the metaphors of

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memory I will draw principally on the work of Danziger (2001, 2002, 2008), Draaisma

(1995) and Roediger (1980).

The storage metaphor of memory dates back to ancient Greek society. It was Platowho first made memory the property of individuals by positing a space in our minds a

gift from the god Mnemosyne where memories are kept (see above quotation). Before

Plato, in the age of Homer and Hesiod, the word memory (mnm), and its derivatives,were probably only used in the context of oral performance of epic poetry or delivering a

speech at a banquetthe Goddess Mnemosyne was also said to have invented language

and words. The incredible feats of memory required for the performance of epic poems(which sometimes lasted several days) were not believed to come from something inside

the performer, but instead from the goddess Mnemosyne or her daughters, the muses, who

inspired the performer(see figure 1). Thus, memory here is a social relation. Moreover,

concern over strict accuracy is hardly relevant in this context of memoryno singlewritten record even exists to compare with the performers version. Instead, the

performer learns the story by listening to other performers and creatively adapts it in thecontext it is told. In these circumstances variations of the same story proliferate. This

prePlatonic notion of remembering clearly fits a culturaland constructive conception ofremembering with its emphasis on activity (instead of the memory as a substance in the

head), the commemorative function of remembering, the guidance of social others (in thiscase divine beings), and the imaginative adjustment of the material to social context.

Insert Figure 1 here

It is interesting to note that anthropologists have found similar conceptions ofmemory as a social relation among the local communities they study. Platos originality was

in making memories the properties of individualswho have good or bad memory

depending on the quality of their waxand by generalizing the concept of memory to other

contexts in which something previously learned is consciously brought to bear on thepresent. His use of writing as a metaphor for this process is not accidental: just as the idea

of divine inspiration was borrowed from the social practices of the day, so too was Platoinfluenced by the newly emerging social practice of writing, with which he would have

become acquainted through his schooling. This is an early case of what Gigerenzer (1991)

calls the tools-to-theoriesheuristic. Platos particular choice of wax tablets (see figure 2) for

his metaphorical source is interesting in that they were not used for purposes of longtermstorage. Wax tablets were useful because they could be easily erased so that the surface

could be reusedthus, their function was for relatively short term purposes, such as

school exercises, notes and memos. Marking a tablet was a simple means of remindingoneself of something, in the same way we write to do lists today. For Plato remindingis to

be distinguished from remembrance or recollection (anamnsis)that is, recovering theknowledge of the Ideal Forms, already possessed at birth. In fact, implicit in his account of

remembrance is a social metaphor, Socrates the midwife of Truth. For example, in the

MenoSocrates guides a slave boy to discover (or in Platos terms, to remember) complex

mathematical Truths through the social facilitation of dialogue. Thus, Plato also provides uswith a theory of remembering with some similarity to the social perspective mentioned

above.

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Insert Figure 2 here

The metaphor of writing was just onepossibledescription of memory for Plato. Forexample, in the Theatetus Plato also describes memory as an aviary to explore the

distinction between possessingand havingknowledge. Birds in ones aviary are possessed

but one has to hold them in ones hand to havethem. This is still a spatial storage metaphorof memory but it differs from an inscription metaphor in that it captures the feeling of

searching for something (i.e. struggling to grab the right bird from the aviary) when we

remember rather than reading from a stationary tablet. Platos diverse descriptions ofmemory are explorations of the phenomena, all of which conceive memory differently than

his contemporaries. As such they are very much still livingmetaphors. In time, however,

what was an innovative new perspective on memory became the only possible way of

conceiving the phenomenathat is, a deadmetaphor. In Aristotle, Platos metaphor of awax tablet is already given a literal physical interpretation. Aristotle defines memory as

the having of an image regarded as a copyof that which it is an image (Aristotle quoted inCasey, 2000, p. 14, my emphasis). Images are said to enter through the senses and are then

imprinted on the physical body as a material trace in the same way a ring is imprinted on awax tablet. This literal interpretation of inscription is retained through the Middle Ages,

where advice was given to improve ones retention of material by warming the back ofones head!

Memory as inscription (whether it is on wax tablets, parchment, paper,

phonographs or magnetic tape) has been by far the most common metaphor of memory inwestern civilization. Part of the reason for this is the ubiquity of using marks as reminders.

From prehistoric times humans have been making marks on surfaces, in the form ofimages or symbols, as a kind of mnemonic device (see Donald, 1991). This practice

reached a new level with the development of writing, which has held a central place in

western civilization since Plato. The other reason for the dominance of inscription as a

metaphor is the flexibility of the metaphor itself. Inscriptions or traces can be conceivedquite literally as physiological changes made to the body or more figuratively as a symbolic

representation of the thing to be remembered, such as words. This latter conceptionmakes it possible to consider abstract drawings, written words, grooves in a record, digital

code, etc. as representations of the object to be remembered. The ancient ArtofMemory

(Yates, 1966), held in high regard until the sixteenth century, develops alongside this

metaphor. In the method of loci technique developed by the Greeks and Romans a personmemorizes the layout of some building, street, or other welllit geographical entity and

then puts symbolic images, representing items to be remembered, in the discrete lociof the

space. When the person needs to retrieve the information stored there he or she walks inthe space and decodes the images. Thus, wax tablets are substituted for imagined places as

the surface on which the person inscribes.In psychology, early advocates of the discipline, such as Wundt and Herbart,

explicitly rejected memory as a scientific category because it was hopelessly tainted with

commonsense ideas. Their vision for psychology as a discipline aimed at general

knowledge construction, however, was abandoned for one that was closer tocommonsense, and as such could easily be applied to different social institutions (see

Danziger, 2001). In contrast, Ebbinghauss (1886/1913) explicit investigation of the

Memory (the title of his bookthe first of its kind in experimental psychology) was

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quickly appropriated by emerging educational institutions, because it was seen to offer

advice for teaching children. Ebbinghaus (1886/1913) memorized lists of nonsense

syllablesliterally meaningless stimuli composed of a consonant, vowel and consonant,for example PEVand then tested himself to see the rate they were forgotten (the curve of

forgetting), how well they were remembered as a function of their position in the list (the

serial position effect), how much time it took to relearn them after they had been forgotten(saving), etc. Indeed, this study did share something in common with the rote learning of

lists done in formal schooling. Ebbinghauss use of nonsense syllables is likely motivated

by his use of the inscription metaphor of memory, which he explicitly uses to conceptualizehis results:

These relations [experimental results] can be described figuratively by speaking of the series

as being more or less deeply engraved in some mental substratum. To carry out this figure:

as the number of repetitions increases, the series are engraved more and more deeply and

indelibly; if the number of repetitions is small, the inscription is but surface deep and only

fleeting glimpses of the tracery can be caught; with a somewhat greater number the

inscription can, for a time at least, be read at will; as the number of repetitions is still further

increased, the deeply cut picture of the series fades out only after ever longer intervals.(Ebbinghaus, 1885/1964, pp. 5253)

How does this persistent metaphor of inscription construct memory as an object? In

other words, what does it reveal and conceal? Danziger (2002) points out how inscription

carries with it three fundamental assumptions about memory:

1. Three distinct phases: The use of writing as an external memory technology

requires three distinct activities separated in time: Writing, storage and reading.

Contemporary psychology has replaced wax tablets with a computer disk but thethree distinct phases remain and are now called encoding, storage and retrieval.

Randall (2007) has recently suggested replacing the computer metaphor of memoryand its three phases with a compost metaphor which has the organic and

interrelated activities of layingiton, breakingitdown, stirringitup, and mixingitin.

2. The individuated trace: Writing leaves a trace that is distinct from other traces.This assumption is reinforced in the contemporary psychology laboratory by using

material that can be easily itemized and counted, such as nonsense syllables and

word lists (see also Mori, 2010). The individuated trace hides that memories oftenblur together into a generalized image. Also, remembering is often incorporated

into ones whole body and performed in context (see Connerton, 1989).

3. The decontextualized text: Writing is a particular genre of communication verydifferent from external or inner speech (Vygotsky, 1986), in that the text retains its

meaning irrespective of the social context. Everyday conversational remembering,in contrast to writing, is highly dependent on context (Middleton and Edwards,

1990).

One additional assumption, related to the other three, should also be introduced here:

4. Spatializing memory: Writing implies a space or place upon which it is done (see

also theArtofMemoryYates, 1966). That place has generally been located in the

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heads of individuals. Alternatively, remembering might be thought of temporally.

This requires us to attend to remembering as an unfolding process, situated in the

interaction between organism and its environment, its past and its present. This isone of Bartletts (1932) key ideas which I will return to in the next section.

It would be too simplistic to say that the various storagemetaphors of memory areuntrue. Each does reveal something about the phenomena and may lead to some practical

usefor example, the development of the method of loci (Yates, 1966) or improved

methods for rote learning in schools. But every metaphor also conceals something: in thiscase the temporal, cultural, contextual and constructive nature of remembering is hidden

from view. It is disadvantageous to the advancement of science to forget the constructed

nature of scientific objects and believe these objects simply are the metaphorical

description we give themthis is especially true in the social sciences. By examining themetaphors of memory above, we are now in a better position to develop new ways of

thinking about remembering with the use of alternative livingmetaphors. In what follows Iwill examine Bartlett alternative to the storage conception of memory and further develop

it with the help of a number of other theories.

SITUATINGREMEMBERING:FROMSTORAGETOACTIONI have never regarded memory as a faculty, as a reaction narrowed and ringed around,

containing all its peculiarities and all explanations within itself. I have regarded it rather as

one achievement in the line of the ceaseless struggle to master and enjoy a world full of

variety and rapid change.

(Bartlett, 1932, p. 314)

Bartletts approach to remembering was developed in direct opposition to the storage

conception. In the first chapter of Remembering: a study in experimental and social

psychology (1932), titled experiment in psychology, he criticizes the inadequacy ofEbbinghauss (1886/1913) nonsense syllable method to the phenomena of memory andmind more generally. Bartlett argues (1) that it is impossible to fully remove meaning from

stimuli that require a human response, (2) attempting to do so creates wholly artificial

conditions with little generalizability to everyday life, and (3) that this method ignoresequal, if not more important, aspects of remembering, such as meaning, imagination and

emotion. It should also be noted that Bartlett explicitly criticizes statistical methods, in thissame chapter, for a similar failure to capture the holistic nature of human responses. In

contradistinction, Bartlett advances an experimental programme in Remembering, using

complex stories and images, and with an analytic focus on understanding holistic human

responses as they are related to an individuals personal and social history.Most psychology textbooks mention Bartletts experiment using methodofrepeated

reproductionin which a single subject reproduces a Native American folktale called Warof

theGhostsat increasing time delays (e.g. after twenty minutes, a week, a year). The foreign

story comes to look more English: hunting seals changes to fishing, supernatural

elements are rationalized away, and the whole narrative structure is transformed. In

conversation with his subjects he found they would link the unfamiliar story to somethingfamiliar to them: For example, one of his subjects commented that the story was like I read

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as a child. But Bartlett also used other, less frequently mentioned, methods for studying

remembering. In the methodofserialreproduction, for example, a subjects reproduction is

shown to another subject to be reproduced at a delay, which is then shown to yet anothersubject, and so on. Then there is the methodofdescription where a subject describes an

image after a time delay. And finally the method ofpicturewriting involves a subject

memorizing pictures corresponding to words. At a later time the experimenter calls outwords for which the subject is to write the corresponding pictures. These latter two

methods are interesting in that they deal with remembering in a different sense modality

than the image was experienced inEdwards and Middleton (1987) called this crossmodal remembering. A number of methods were also used in Remembering to explore

perceiving and imagining, highlighting the fact that Bartlett did not see these as unrelated

processes. In all these experiments Bartlett found subjects interests, affects, ideals and

previous experience played a central role in how stimuli were perceived, imagined andremembered. This is very different from the inscription metaphors notion that stimuli are

impressed on the mind as a set of sensations which can later be read off.Bartlett (1936, 1958, 2008) mentions many important influences on the

development of his ideas, which led him to study remembering as he did. His first readingsin psychology were Stouts Manual (1899),Analytic Psychology (1896) andGroundwork

(1903), together with Wards (1886) famous article psychology in the Encyclopaedia

Britannica, which Bartlett traveled 18 miles to the nearest library once a week to read. From these two Cambridge mentors he learned to think of mind as activity rather than a

substance. From the Cambridge anthropologists, William Halse Rivers and Alfred CortHaddon, came Bartletts lifelong interest in cultural dynamics and their relationship to

mind, though this focus was more evident in his early work (e.g. Bartlett, 1923)it shouldbe noted here that Bartlett originally intended to go into anthropology. Rivers was also a

doctor of medicine and like the other Cambridge physiciansnamely C. S. Myers, William

MacDougal and Henry Headhe preferred to treat human reactions as wholes, rather than

analyzing them as isolated responses. From these Cambridge physicians, Bartlett learnedto take a clinical approach in his experiments, asking subjects about their history in order

to interpret their present reactions. There were also a number of important Germaninfluences that advocated a thoroughly holistic approach, such as Wilhelm Wundt, G.E.

Mller, Kraepelin, Wilhelm Stern, Gestalt psychology and the Wrzburg School. In short,

Bartlett developed his ideas during a period in psychologys history in which thinkers were

moving away from reductive theories and methods borrowed from physiology andbeginning to investigate mind as a complex and developing whole (see also Ash, 1996).

Also, at this time disciplinary boundaries were still considerably open, allowing for much

crossfertilization of ideas. These influences lead Bartlett to develop a psychology with anumber of distinctive characteristics:

1. The multiple bases of cognition: Bartlett recognized the importance of the social, the

psychological and the biological bases of cognition and attempted to bring them

together in his theorizing (see Saito, 1996, 2000). His work clearly reveals the

impact of contemporary developments in anthropology, psychology and neurology.He attempted an integration of these ideas that brings together the biological

functional and the sociocultural features of mind.

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2. Mind as active process: Bartlett consistently uses the gerund form of mental verbs

to emphasis ongoing psychological processes over static thingsfor example, the

title of his book is Remembering rather than the Memory. Furthermore, hedescribes all welldeveloped psychological processes as involving an effort after

meaning (cf. Ganzheitspsychologies notion of striving for the wholeDiriwtcher

and Valsiner, 2008). In other words, the mind does not mechanically respond toinputs like a machine, but rather it has purposes in the world, it strives to construct

an intelligible world in which to act by connecting something given with something

other than itself (Bartlett, 1932, p. 227).3. The unity of mind: The mind operates as a whole, not as a number of separate

faculties. Therefore, it is unfeasible to make sharp distinctions between perceiving,

recognizing, remembering, imagining and thinking (see Edwards and Middleton,

1987). They are all manifestations of a unitary mind and as such differ in degreebutnot kind. For example, imagining is freer and involves multiple settings, whereas

remembering is focused more on a single setting, although Bartletts experimentsclearly show other settings do play a significant part in remembering. This idea of

minds unity is also central to organismic theories, such as those of Goldstein,Werner and Whitehead.

4. Feeling and attitude: An attitude says Bartlett (1932, p. 191) has to be treated asbelonging to the whole subject, or organism. It is an organisms holistic felt way

of relating to the world through which different parts come into focus. Elsewhere,

Bartlett (1925, p. 17) says feelings arise whenever a response is held up,obstructed in some way, or [] the cognitive material involved in the making of a

response is blurred, vague or indefinite. In other words, when ones habitualactivity is interrupted a feeling or attitude provides a quick means of reorientation

to the world (cf. Rosenthal, 2004). Higher psychological responses (i.e. responses

involving consciousness) are said to begin with an attitude turned to the past, a

point I will elaborate on in the next section.

When we apply this general theoretical framework to the phenomena ofremembering the question of accuracy of memories is subordinated to the question of how

an organism uses its past in its ongoing transactions with the environment. It should be

noted that this perspectivewhereby the mind is another way an organism adapts to its

environmentwas being advocated by many other thinkers around the same time,including Baldwin, Bergson, Dewey, James, Mead and von Uexkull. From this functionalist

perspective, remembering many details with strict accuracy may actually be dysfunctional.

Borges (1944) fictional tale of Funes (a man who could not forget) and Lurias (1987)study of the mnemonist Sherashevskii both vividly illustrate this point. Luria (1987)

concluded that Sherashevskiis incredible memory for details was limitless; yet rather thanbenefiting him, it interfered with his ability to generalize from details. His life was simply a

vast collection of details without integration and as such the job of a professional

mnemonist was all that really suited him. By contrast, a normally functioning individual

remembers the gist of an event together with a few outstanding details. This provides theindividual with a past that can be flexibly used to deal with an uncertain and changing

environment. In order to theorize this process of flexibly using past to adapt to the present,

Bartlett develops the concept of schema, which he adapts from the Cambridge neurologist

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Henry Head. Head (1920) provides examples of braindamaged patients who have lost the

ability to coordinate one movement with the next:

Let him close his eyes and let the hand be picked up and the hand and arm moved. He may

be able to localise the spot touched on the skin surface perfectly well, but he refers it to the

position in which the hand was, because he has entirely lost the capacity to relate serial

movements.

(Bartlett, 1932, p. 199, my emphasis)

Our Cartesian heritage leads us to speak of a simple pathway between sensory receptor

and brain/mind. However, this striking case of schematic breakdown makes clear that

something more complex is at work. Localizing a sensation in space requires fitting it tothe past and present combination of sensations of ones entire body. A schema here is an

indivisible series of temporally organized body postures. If ones corporeal schema is

severed there is no way of coordinating sensations in time and space; thus they take on thisstrange isolated character in experience.

Bartlett generalizes the concept of schema (from its corporeal origins) to apply toany welldeveloped organic response, including visual, auditory, various types of

cutaneous impulses and the like, at a relatively low level; all the experiences connected by a

common interest: in sport, in literature, history, art, science, philosophy and so on, on a

higher level (Bartlett, 1932, p. 201). He says that he prefers the terms active developingpatterns and organized settings to schemata but continues to use the latter

nonetheless. Whatever name is given to the concept the general focus is the same: that any

present response is possible because of an organised set if past reactionsand therefore,schemata are actively doing something all the time (p. 201). Any reaction utilizes existing

schema but at the same time further develops them, in a fashion analogous to Piagets

notions of assimilation and accommodation. Thus, an action has a dual existence, being

generated out of both an organisms past and the demands of its present situation. Bartlettgives the example of a tennis stroke:

When I make the stroke I do not, as a matter of fact, produce something absolutely new, and

I never merely repeat something old. The stroke is literally manufactured out of the living

visual and postural 'schemata' of the moment and their interrelations.

(Bartlett, 1932, p. 202)

Thus, for Bartlett, action points in two directionsto the past and to the present. The past

is carried forward enmassand flexibly adapted to the novel features of the present.

Psychologists since Bartlett have interpreted the schema concept in a number ofways. On the one hand, this is the result of Bartletts variable use of the conceptNorway

(1940) identifies four different ways Bartlett used the word, each related to a different

influence on Bartletts thinking. On the other hand, various interpretations of schema isan outcome of the constructive transformation of knowledge as it transferred from one

social group to another that Bartlett (1923, 1926, 1928, 1932) himself theorizedfor ahistory of appropriations of Bartletts ideas see Johnston (2001). Much of cognitive

psychology, for example, has taken schema to mean a knowledge structure where

experiences are stored. This conception is apparent in Mandler and Johnsons (1977)

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notion of story schema, a universal and abstract story grammar that selects which

discrete parts of a story are memorable and forgettable. These psychologists have moved

beyond a simple storage metaphor to a hierarchically organized model, but this model still

spatializesmemory and locates it in the head (Roediger, 1980). As such this conception

does not incorporate Bartletts (1932) key insight that psychological activities are

temporally organized into a continuous stream of serial movements in context. A secondproblem is that Mandler and Johnson (1977) assumed story schema were the same for

anyone in any society and at any time in history. Thus, they also ignore Bartletts interest

in linking schema to the customs, traditions and values of specific social groups, a point Iwill further elaborate on below.

At the other extreme of interpretation is discursive psychologys understanding of

schema as a discourse conventionthey point out Bartlett preferred term was organized

setting. Their analysis becomes one of comparing differences in discursive action betweenone social context with another, rather than between some stimulus and later memory of it

(Middleton and Edwards, 1990). Thus, discursive psychology analyzes precisely whatcognitive psychologists have ignored (i.e. social context), and understandably so, because

the discursive approach challenges the wider validity of processes observed in anexperimental context. For example, Middleton and Edwards (1990) compare the

differences in conversationally remembering a film as part of an experiment and postexperiment, by leaving the tap recorder on after the experiment finishes. They find that

in the experiment subjects focus on sequentially ordering and connecting events, whereas

postexperiment the focus shifts to evaluations of the film and emotional reactions to it. Itshould also be mentioned here that creating an experimental task resembling a meaningful

activity in childrens lives greatly improves childrens memory for lists of words, whencompared to a standard experimental tests (see Istomina, 1975; Mistry etal., 2001). There

is no way to divorce psychological processes from the context in which they occur: thus,

experiments are themselves a particular contexts, which like all contexts shape the

psychological process embedded within them. Discursive psychology significantlydevelops the social contextual strand of Bartletts schema concept but also leaves aside

another important aspect of it: namely, that memory is personal [] because themechanism of adult human memory demands an organization of schema depending upon

an interplay of appetites, instincts, interests and ideas peculiar to any given subject

(Bartlett, 1932, p. 213). In discursive psychology the original personal experience is

irrelevant in so far as it does not contribute to the collective endeavour of remembering.Moris (2008, 2009, 2010) innovative interpretation of Bartletts schema concept

takes a middle road, by acknowledging that remembering occurs in social context, usually

in discourse, and at the same time focuses his analysis on the personal dimensions ofremembering. To do this he creates an experiment in which subjects navigate around a

university campus, and at a month later exchange their experience with another subjectwho navigated a different university. Thus, they have knowledge of two university

navigations one direct and the other indirect. Two weeks after the exchange, subjects are

interrogated about what happened during the navigations,by a third subject who believes

the subject navigated both universities, followed by two additional interrogation sessionstaking place at twoweek intervals. In his analysis, Mori (2008) compares a subjects

narrative for the direct and indirect experience of navigation in order to discover different

organization of schema between the two. He finds that the narrative of direct experience

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of an environment takes the form of what he calls agentalteration, that is, referring to

agents of action (self and other) alternatively, such as Idid then hedid so Idid. Thisparallels the cyclical action between agent and environment that Gibson (1979) calledperceptionaction cycles. In contrast, the narrative form of indirect experience the agent

was referred to successivelyfor example, Idid... then IdidMori (2008) also identified four other differences in narrative form between the two

universities but the need not concern us here. What needs to be stressed here is the

temporal and contextual nature of Moris schema concept. In remembering we locate

ourselves in time and in a sense reexperience the temporal unfolding of cyclical contactwith the environment. Memories are not localized in the head but rather in time, or better

in two temporalities: the past time of the experience and present time of remembering it.

Both times involve a person in interaction with an environment. Mori (2008, p. 313) makes

the point well,

Premodern people asked why things burnt. Their answer was that they had phlogiston

(burnable stuff) in them. Psychologists once asked why we remember our past and

answered that we had engram (memory trace) in us. They were both mistaken. Peoplenow know burning is one type of oxidation. So what is remembering? It is an emergent

activity (often communicative) that is restricted by both rememberers duration of

experience and the present situation in which it is performed.

Bergson (1911) made a similar point long ago when he argued that just because the brainwas necessary for actualizing memorizes does not mean that memories reside in the brain.

Above, it has already been argued that thinking of memories as being stored in a spatiallocation misleads us. The problem is that psychology has inherited an empiricists

conception of perception and memory, whereby the former can be reduced to the effect of

static and isolated impressions on the sense organs and the latter is simply a dulled form ofthe former. Instead, we might say memories are located in the past, but not just any past; it

is marked as mypast. This is why Bergson (1911) made a fundamental distinction between

perception and memory (mmoire-souvenir): perception does involve memory but it

memory to interpret what is happening now and as such differs only in degrees frommatter. By contrast memory is always distinctly of time past. In sum, perceiving is better

described as an unfolding activity that holistically weaves together past and present, in acreative stream (James, 1890) or an indivisible motion (Bergson, 1911), than as

sensations passively impressed on the mind. Individual perception on its own does not

provide discrete units of experience that can be stored away as isolated traces to be

remembered later on; instead, it shows a duration of experience which is onlydifferentiated into memorable objects with the help of social means (Halbwachs, 1925). It

is to this process of selfreflection and the social differentiation of experience that we nowturn.

REMEMBERINGASTURNINGAROUNDONONESOWNSCHEMAWhen a self does appear it always involves an experience of another; there could not be an

experience of a self simply by itself. The plant or the lower animal reacts to its environment,

but there is no experience of a self.

(Mead, 1934, p. 195)

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The schema concept by itself did not yet remembering in the full human sense of the word

for Bartlett; but rather how the past manifests itself in an individuals nonreflectiveengagement with the worlda mode of action that is shared with other animals. To locate

specific information about the past the organism has somehow to acquire the capacity to

turn around upon its own schemata and construct them afresh (Bartlett, 1932, p. 206).Put differently the organism must find a way to rupture its seamless flow of activity in the

world by evoking schemata that are not present, thus stimulating action outside of the

particular parameters of the hereandnow situation. Schemata become not merelysomething that works the organism, but something that the organism can work (p. 208).

This is the point at which consciousness arises and the environment becomes dual: past

and present differentiate such that the organism can now use the specific settings of the

past to control itself in the hereandnow in order to prepare for an imagined future. Inother words, past schemata are made the objects of his reaction in the present (p. 202).

Let us look more closely at exactly what is involved in this process.Bartlett says that remembering begins by setting up an attitude(i.e. holistic feeling),

such as doubt, hesitation, surprise, astonishment confidence, dislike, repulsion (pp. 206207), towards an object/event. One way of setting up an attitude is by naming an object

for example, in Bartletts experiments using the Native American story WaroftheGhosts,one subject began by saying its not English and another like I read as a child. When a

subject later remembers the story they turn their attitude towards the massed effects of

past reactions [schema] (p. 208), and proceed to construct a memory of the object/eventlargely on the basis of this attitude, and its general effect is the justification of the attitude

(p. 207). In other words, we first get a general impressionof the material that guides us inreconstructing the probable details. As further evidence for this, Luria (1987) tells us that

part of the reason for Shereshevskiis near flawless memory for details was his extreme

synaesthesiawhere stimulation of one sensory pathway simultaneously leads to the

automatic experience in anotherwhich enabled him to rigorously check the veracity ofhis memories against the whole body feeling that the object had created for him.

Attitudes are determined primarily by the last preceding incidentthat is, they area consequence of perceptual and attentional schemata. However, this explanation seems to

miss the fact that we often spontaneously remember things with little relation to the

present. Bartlett answers this problem with his concept of image, the third major concept

in his theory of remembering. Bartletts other two concepts (i.e. attitudesand schemata)can be found, in more rudimentary forms, in other organisms, and they are used to explain

the generalization that occurs in remembering. By contrast, images particularize

remembering by focusing in on details. They do this by picking bits out of schemata (p.219) and thus break apart schemata and its serial determination. In this way they can also

aid in the formation of attitudesfor example, an image might spontaneously come tomind when asked to recall a story, which in turn can then be used to set up an attitude to

the schema from which the image comes. Bartlett tells us how one subject only

remembered the two town names from the story Native American story WaroftheGhosts.

However, this imagery enables her to set up an attitude towards the story as a whole, sothat she can proceed to reconstruct the story. Images are then used as navigation points in

the reconstructive process.

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At first sight the image concept seems to sneak in a storage theory of memory

through the back door. The difference is that images are actively constructed based on an

organisms interests and emotions, and they change according to those interests. Also, theyhave to be understood as functioning to facilitate an organisms action: Bartlett (1925) says

images arise out of cross streams of two dominant conflicting tendencies to action so as to

enable a quick unambiguous response in the face of uncertainty. Bartlett (1916b, 1932)speaks of two kinds of imagesvisual and vocal. Both serve the same function of

breaking schemata but their character differs in many respects. First, visualization is said

to carry certainty with it whereas vocalization is accompanied by doubt. This is the casebecause of visual images vivid, rich and exciting expression in consciousness. Due to these

characteristics, when a subject is torn between a visual and vocal memory of an object they

will choose the former. Secondly, vocalization is a direct expression of meanings, while

meanings have to be developed out of visualization. For this reason, remembering throughvisualizing appears jerky in comparison with vocalizing. Bartlett also comments that

subjects tend to prefer the use of one of these modes in their engagement with hisexperimental tasks, which he can say because he used some the same subjects in multiple

experiments.Bartletts theory of remembering is highly phenomenological and does not provide a

mechanism for how we escape our embodied action in the here and nowthat is how toturn around on ones own schema, as when an image arises in an organisms seamless

flow of action. In two places in Remembering, Bartlett explicitly states I wish I knew how it

was done (p. 206 and p. 209) and in an unpublished paper, written at the end of his life, hedefends the phrase turning around on ones own schemata as being simply a

description of what he found, rather than an explanation of the process (see Bartlett,2008, pp. 49). This gap in his theory is one reason why the concept of schema was

rejected by Bartletts students (e.g. Oldfield and Zangwill, 1943). In one place in

Remembering, Bartlett does locate the origins of this process in complexities of human

social life where the schema determined reactions of one organism are repeatedlychecked, as well as constantly facilitated, by those of others (Bartlett, 1932, p. 206), but

this idea remains undeveloped. An explanation of how turning around on ones ownschema is possible requires the theoretical support of the pragmatist philosopher and

social psychologist George Herbert Mead.

Mead (1934) argued that we are able to selfreflect because we can take the

attitudes of others towards our Selves. He described the emergence of mind and self out ofa naturalistic process of social interaction. A child becomes reflexive (i.e. they can turn

around on his or her own schema) when he or she is able to take the attitude of another

toward him or her self. This develops out of the participation in institutionalized socialacts (i.e. acts directed at others), through stable social positions (in reality, play or

imagination), such as buying and selling, giving and receiving, hiding and seeking, talkingand listening, teaching and learning, etc. In so doing, the child simultaneously embodies

divergent perspectives (or attitudes) for the same social act. These divergent perspectives

(e.g. buying and selling) are paired through the vocal gesture which is heard from both

sides of a social act. A gesture becomes significant when the gesture maker takes theattitude of the other in the social act towards himself or herself, thus becoming both

subject and object in experience. They know how the other will respond to the gesture

because they have been in that social position before. When this communication is turned

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inward it becomes inner thought and externally paired social positions become the

architecture of the self (Gillespie, 2006). Reflection is a process of taking up these different

perspectives toward ones selfthat is, becoming other to self.This perspectival aspect of Meads theory can also help explain the phenomena

known as field and observer memories (see Nigro and Neisser, 1983; Robinson and

Swanson, 1993). It has been recognized, at least since Freud (1899), that whenremembering we can find ourselves in either first or third person perspectives. An action

is physically perceived from the first person field perspective, yet we often elaborate it in

remembering as if we witnessed it from the perspective of others. This can also happen inreverse: remembering an event externally observed from the perspective of someone

involved in it.

In Meads theory any act of reflection involves at least two perspectivesit is by

taking the perspective of the other that we can get outside of ourselves. The other Meadspeaks of can be a specific other or what he calls the generalized other, which is the

perspective of the whole groupthat is, its norms, values, myths, etc. His concept comesvery close to Halbwachss (1925) notion of social frameworks which I will now discuss.

THESOCIALCONTEXTOFREMEMBERINGIt is in society that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they

recall, recognize, and localize their memories.

(Halbwachs, 1992, p. 38)

Our memories remain collective and are recalled to us through others even though only

we were participants in the events or saw the things concerned. In reality, we are never

alone. Other men need not be physically present, since we always carry with us and in us a

number of distinct persons.

(Halbwachs, 1980, p. 23)

Bartlett began his Cambridge undergraduate lectures on social psychology (and Part

II of Remembering, pp 239243) with two stories that he gathered during his 1929 visit toSouth African, at which time he was able to do some fieldwork among the Swazi and thus

finally realize his earlier anthropological aspirations. These stories are reports from othersand as such we should be somewhat sceptical of their credibility, due to the very processes

of change that Bartlett found in his experiments. Our major interest is here though is not in

their accuracy, but rather how Bartlett uses them to delineate the object of social

psychology. The first story is of a Swazi ceremony whereby those guilty of causing somecalamitye.g. loss of cattle, sudden death, illness, crop failure, etc.through wizardry, are

identified and killed. It is called smelling out by the Swazi because guilt is said to smellbad. The group sits in a circle each holding a spear, while a witch doctor dances around the

inside of the ring, stopping in front of one man and jumping away. This is continued several

times until finally the man is speared to death on the spot. Five or six men are said to be

killed in wild excitement on the same night. Bartlett points out that the Swazi are generallylawabiding and not terribly excitable; they are no more likely to kill in the case of an

ordinary neighbourly meeting than a typical European would. But under these specific

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social conditions their emotions can be so excited to do so. This is a case of direct social

guidance of individual conduct in a group, or what would today be called social influence.

In the second story a Swazi native on a journey spends a night in a kraal. While hewas sitting talking to the chief a black mambathe most deadly snake in the region

slithers toward him from a hole in the ground. He immediately throws his spear at the

snake and kills it, but just as quickly the chief picks up a heavy chunk of wood and knockshim to the ground with it. The Swazi traveller narrowly escapes but dies later as a result of

poor medical treatment. Why would the chief all of a sudden attack the visitor? The

answer: in this region there is a close relationship between the spirit of dead ancestors andsnakes, and in this village the black mamba was particularly important. The killed snake

was said to be the chiefs grandfather and thus he had a reason to attack. What we see in

this example is how group traditions, norms and beliefs are internalized by individuals,

such that they guide individual behaviour without the group being physically present.Thus social psychology is the study of how behaviour is facilitated by a groups

customs, conventions and beliefs, through either the direct influence of others or throughinternalized others. At first glance two examples seem to describe exactly what social

psychology has studied: How social influence can lead to violence, for example, is preciselywhat Milgrams (1974) obedience experiments and Zimbardos prison experiment were

concerned with, and the continued persistence of group norms outside the group was whatSherif (1935) demonstrated in his famous autokinetic experiments. Bartletts

understanding of social psychology differs from these in his focus on specificsocialgroups

and the cultural conventions particular to them. For example, many of Bartlettsexperiments were carried out during the First World War and Bartlett points out how this

influences there responses in several places: He describes how when one of his subjectswho lived among people who were constantly talking about and expecting airraidswas

presented with a pointing hand, he said immediately that he had seen an antiaircraft gun

firing at a plane (Bartlett, 1932, p. 244). In his serial reproduction experiment, Bartlett

notes how the excuse given by one of the young men for not going to battle, in the WaroftheGhoststory, is changed to elderly relatives would grieve terribly if he did not return

(p. 129).An English anthropologist Nadel decided to test the shaping power of social

conventions in his field site. The first story describes social facilitation of a piece of

conduct within a specific group, while the second illustrates how the group does not need

to be physically present to have an influence to have an influence on individual behaviour.

The social context of remembering: Bartlett argues that remembering can take different

forms depending on the reception audience and social situation. When an individual isnarrating a story to auditors of his own group the comic, the pathetic and the dramatic []

will tend to spring to prominence (Bartlett, 1932, p. 266), creating all kinds ofdramatization and exaggeration. It is this form of communication that leads to the growth

of popular rumours. However, if the audience is a dominating alien group, remembering

will either become recapitulatory (when the narrator is unfamiliar with audience) or the

story the narrator tells will tend to be constructed along the lines of the audiencespersistent interests and tendencies, rather than that of the narrators own group. Thus, like

Mead (1934) Bartlett does recognize that the social act of remembering is situated between

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at least two perspectives. The experimental situation for example creates a situation

tending toward rote recall.

Bartletts idea here can be elaborated with Bakhtins concept of speechgenres, which he

defines as relatively stable types of utterances in the sense of thematic content, style,

and compositional structure (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 60). They occur in typical settings, withtypical kinds of addressees, serving typical functionsin Bartletts language they are the

groups preferred persistent tendencies.1 Speech genres also define a situation, position

ourselves to others and help us to move toward goals. Take, for example, the simplegreeting, hello, how are you? said while passing another on the street. This utterance

creates a situation of brief communication before continuing on ones way, suggests a

friendly though somewhat formal relationship, and attempts to establish recognition. The

speech genre of military commands is quite different. When applied to remembering itis clear that there are characteristically very different genres of communicationfor

example, giving a courtroom testimony versus reminiscing at home with ones family, orbetween recalling a movie as part of a psychology experiment versus discussing it with

ones friends (see Edwards and Middleton, 1986b).The social organization of remembering: Plato said that an individuals memory was

good or bad memory in the sense of retaining information depending on the quality ofhis or her block of wax (i.e. memory faculty). Commonsense still leads people to talk as if

memory was good or bad in itself rather than good or bad at remembering a particular kind

of material. Bartlett (1932, 2008) is clear that remembering is domain specific andsocialized by the group. Indeed, contemporary studies of memory expertise for example,

on chess players and waiters conclude that impressive memory abilities are a result ofskills to meaningfully organize information in a particular content domain (see Ericsson et

al., 2000, for a review). In Bartletts own field studies in South Africa, he asked a Swaziland

herdsman for a list of the cattle bought by his employer the year previously, together with

whatever detail he cared to give (Bartlett, 1932, p. 249). The herdsman had merelyoverheard the transaction a year earlier and had nothing to gain from it. However, cattle

dealings were an important social activity within this community; as such it was notunexpected that the herdsman would remember the transaction with incredible detail,

making only two trifling errors. The opposite will occur (i.e. radical reconstruction of the

material) when the material to be remembered comes from outside the social groupfor

example, a foreign folktale or picture. In this case, the material will be significantlytransformed through assimilation, simplification and constructive elaboration into a

familiar cultural form. Bartlett (1932) calls this process conventionalization and shows it

happening on both individual and group levels. In sum, social influences guideremembering through selective attention to and meaningful elaboration of material. To

explore exactly how memory is socialized by the group we will next look at Vygotskystheory of mediation.

Halbwachs follows his mentor Durkheim in arguing that memory only becomespossible out of participation in a collective. In belonging to various social groups (e.g.

1See Beals (1998) for a comparison of Bartlett and Bakhtin.

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family, religious and class groups) an individual takes part in different social frameworks

through which his or her experience takes shape, becomes memorable and can later be

retrieved. The group does not need to be physically present for it to exert its influencebecause the person carries the groups perspective within him or herself. The primary

mechanism by which individual experience is linked to these social frameworks is

linguisticthat is, the naming and categorizing of experience (cf. Moscovici, 2008)though there are also condensed and vivid images that function to define a group. Thus,

social frameworks enable the differentiation of individual experience into meaningful

social forms. In language the individual takes the perspective of the group towards his orher own experience (cf. taking the perspective of the otherMead, 1934). Even in

dreams, the most private of experiences, individuals still use language (and with it social

frameworks) to comprehend the fragmentary images that incoherently succeed one

another. The irrational and unordered consciousness found in dream also demonstrateswhat happens to memory when social frameworks are only minimally active. The illusion

that some memories originate purely in the individual consciousness comes from the factthat individuals belong to multiple social frameworks, which contrast and reinforce each

other in such a way that they create a unique perspective in the individual, but still anirreducibly social one. Halbwachss concept of social framework is close to Moscovicis

(2000) concept of social representation, which is somewhat unsurprising given theirshared Durkheimian ancestry. Both concepts point to a groups particular commonsense

mentality by which it understands the world and itself. Additionally, both theorists

situate individual minds at the intersection of different groups ways of thinking. Bartletthad read Halbwachss (1925) book and borrowed from it (usually without citation) in his

book Remembering Bartlett even uses the phrase social framework instead of socialschema in many places but he also criticized Halbwachs for saying that the group itself

remembers. Whether Halbwachs was actually making this claim is debatable; nevertheless,

it is the case that Halbwachs overemphasized the collective nature of social consciousness

at the expense of the actual thought processes of individualsthe individual becomes akind of automaton of the groups will. Bartlett (1932) is more explicit that remembering

occurs inthe group, not bythe group.Bartlett, Mead and Halbwachs theories converge on the idea that an individuals

remembering needs to be understood in relation to the social groups to which he or she

belongs and the position he or she occupies in those groups. Bartlett, however, did not

provide a clear mechanism to connect interactions in social groups with an individualsability to turn around on his or her self. His concept of schema includes both the somatic

self (i.e. the purely embodied engagement with the world) as well as the reflective self,

without clearly differentiating the two. Mead and Halbwachs, by contrast, argue that inorder to turn around on ones self one has to take the perspective of social othersthus,

the reflective self is inherently a social self for them. Bartlett did recognize the primacy ofthe social in remembering but did not adequately theorize the social mechanism in the

psychological act of remembering. However, in other ways Bartletts theorizing does offer

a number of illuminating insights on the relationship between individual remembering and

social groups, mainly the social context of recall and social organization of its material.

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Preferred, persistent, group tendencies can be most easily made out on the basis of a

study of folk possessionspopular stories, art, newspapers, current jokes and

proverbs, and perhaps cinema and the popular stage. Bartlett (1932, p. 261).

MEDIATEDMEMORY:FROMKNOTSTONARRATIVEThe very essence of human memory is that human beings actively remember with the help

of signs. It is a general truth that the special character of human behaviour is that human

beings actively manipulate their relation to the environment, and through the environment

they change their own behaviour, subjugating it to their control. As one psychologist has

said [Dewey], the very essence of civilization consists in the fact that we deliberately build

monuments so as not to forget. In the knotted handkerchief and the monument we see the

most profound, most characteristic and most important feature which distinguishes human

from animal memory.

(Vygotsky, 1931, p. 86, quoted from Bakhurst, 1990, p. 210)

Just as the tool enabled humans to master and control their environment, the sign orsymbol, says Vygotsky, enabled them to master and control themselves. In many ways,

Vygotskys theory of memory is less radical than Bartletts: Vygotsky never directly

questions the adequacy of the storage metaphor and standardized memory materials such

as word lists. His major innovation was to conceptualize remembering as a process ofmediation and to develop ways of studying it as such. Vygotsky thought that the

impressive advances in memory ability in human history and ontogeny could not easily be

accounted for through a purely natural process of evolution or biological maturation;instead, one would have to look to the diverse social technologies of memory found in

societies around the world. Naturally we can remember seven plus or minus two pieces of

information at a given time (Miller, 1956); however, with simple memory technologies,

such as chunking information into meaningful units, the number can be vastly increased(Bruner, 1990). In fact, the modern practice of organizing a book into sections and

paragraphs (as with the present thesis) is a medieval external memory technology that prechunks the books material for internal memory (Danziger, 2008).

Meaningmaking is thus essential to Vygotskys theory of mediated memory.

Vygotsky and Luria (1930) used the example of tying knots on a ropea memorytechnique that was widespread in many preliterate societies. Making a knot on a rope to

remember something gives the knot meaning, that is, transforms it from a neutral object

into a sign. Paralleling Marxs description of a tool as a device to control and masternature, Vygotsky describes the sign as a special kind of tool used to control and master

oneself. This is possible because the sign has reverse actionit acts back on its creator.

Thus, in constructing a sign we come to control ourselves from the outside; our activitycomes to be mediated through signs. We do this when we write notes to ourselves in ourplanner, put an image of a pig on our refrigerator to remind ourselves of our plans to lose

weight, or bring back objects from a vacation to remember the trip. At the societal level, webuild monuments, designate important days in the year and tell special stories about the

community in order to bring the past into the present.

The ability to effectively use signs emerges out of a process of social interaction.Higher psychological processes are internalized dramatizations of social conduct. In this

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respect his theory comes very close to Meads theory reviewed above (see also Valsiner and

van der Veer, 1988, 2000). Vygotskys metaphor of mind is explicitly theatrical. In a famous

quotation, Vygotsky (1987, p. 145) says:

[E]very function in the cultural development of the child appears on the stage twice, in two

planes, first, the social, then the psychological, first between people as an intermentalcategory, then within the child as an intramental category. This pertains equally to voluntary

attention, to logical memory, to the formation of concepts, and to the development of will.

Thus, according to Vygotsky, the operation of higher psychological functions is a social

relation. Vygotsky gives the example of pointing, which begins as the childs failed attemptto reach an object. When the adult interprets the gesture as meaning the child wants the

object and brings it to them, the child learns to act out this gesture on stage with and for the

adult, in order to make them fetch the object. In reorienting the gesture from the object tothe adult it changes from reachingto pointing. To complete the story, the child might later

use the pointing gesture in private to control their own activity for example, to focus their

attention on a particular object.Likewise, childrens memory abilities develop through remembering with adults

who already possess the requisite tools of language and narrative. In early conversations

children contribute only a few brief and fragmentary details to remembering. Children oftwo years begin to remember events that occurred weeks or maybe even months ago but

they still lack the language tenses and temporal markers to effectively organize their

experiences in time for example, yesterdayand tomorrowmay be used for any daythat is not today (Harner, 1982). Instead, they rely on adults to supply most of the content

and to order it into a coherent narrativethat is, adults scaffold childrens emerging

memory abilities (Nelson and Fivush, 2004a, 2004b). Interestingly, this research hastended to focus on adult suggestion as a positive factor, in contrast to the negative

significance it has in eyewitness testimony research. For example, one of the mostcommonly talked about distinctions in this developmental literature is between low and

high parental elaborations (usually maternal) in talking about the past, the latter beingcorrelated with a positive outcomes such as greater recall by children later on (e.g. seeReese et al., 1993). To give another example of positive suggestion, Pipe et al. (1996)

compared childrens memory for a novel event that was either fully narrated to them by an

adult or for which they were given an empty narration (i.e. with little labelling of actions

or objects, and no explanations for why actions were being performed). They found thechildren in the full narration condition remembered the event much better both verbally

and in action than the children in the empty narration condition. In action children were

able to talk themselves through the activity from the perspective of an adultthat is,

control themselves from the outside through speech patterned as a narrative. Thus, thisresearch on the development of childrens memory indicates that the very ability to

remember is dependent on cultural tools, such as language and narrative. As Vygotskydescribed much earlier, these tools are first encountered on the intermental plane and are

only later integrated into intramental activity: the adult first asks questions and makes

suggestions to the child to stimulate his or her remembering and provides a conventional

narrative structure to organize experience in such a way that it can be communicated (cf.Halbwachs social frameworks). Later on the child uses the same kinds of questioning

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general frameworks from which specific narratives are constructed). The latter concept is

explicitly developed from Bartletts notions of schema and an effort after meaning. In

Wertschs (2002) research he finds that Russians tell their history within the schematicnarrative template of triumphoveralienforcesthat is, an outside aggressor leads to

internal crisis which is only overcome by the heroism of the Russian people. This narrative

template is unconsciously applied to historical events as different as the 19181920Russian civil war and World War II. Moreover, its use by Russians can be traced back to

Soviet sponsored schooling, where history textbooks all told the same story. In short, the

narrative template triumphoveralienforces is the tool by which Russians make sense ofthemselves and their history. It is the mechanism of commonsense agentically used

(sometimes even with irony) by those who went through the Russian education system.

CONCLUSION: FROMMEMORY IS STORAGETOREMEMBERING ISCONSTRUCTION

Premodern people asked why things burnt. Their answer was that they had phlogiston

(burnable stuff) in them. Psychologists once asked why we remember our past and answeredthat we had engram (memory trace) in us. They were both mistaken. People now know

burning is one type of oxidation. So what is remembering? It is an emergent activity (often

communicative) that is restricted by both rememberers duration of experience and the

present situation in which it is performed.

(Mori, 2008, p. 313)

In this chapter I have moved away from the notion that the memory is a faculty that storessensory impressions. The storage metaphor of memory focuses on memories as

individuated asocial traces, spatially located in the heads of individuals. As an alternative

approach, I have developed Bartlett and Vygotskys metaphor of remembering as the

activity of construction. From this perspective the temporal nature of remembering comesinto focusthat is, memories in the process of being built. Extending this metaphor, we

ask what tools are used by an agent to perform this activity: the tools of remembering are

social relations, broadly conceived as anything which belongs, or has at one time belonged,

to the intermental plan of activitythus, they are inherently linked to communication,culture and society. Language and narrative are two related kinds of tools that we have

explored. Pushing the metaphor of construction further still, we can say that there is adirect relationship between the tools used in remembering and the form in which a

memory is constructed. Just as the ancient Egyptians could not build higher than the

pyramids with the technologies of their day, so too are memories constrained and enabledby the tools we use to build them.

FUTUREDIRECTIONS1. What does the construction metaphor of memory conceal?

2. How precisely are schemas developed?3. How are embodied experiential qualities of memories related to the social tools of

remembering?

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4. How do we understand variability of memories between different members of the

same social group?

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FIGURES

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Figure1AGreekmosaicofMnemosyneinspiringaspeakeratabanquet.

Figure2WaxtabletandstylususedinancientGreeceforwriting

Figure3Narrativeconstructionofevents. FromBresc,2008,p.7.

Events(narrative mediated products

endowed with meaning)

Thematic narrative

(utterance)

Happenings

(signs with multiple

potential meanings) Meaning-making