Remembering Reconsidered Ecological and Traditional Approaches to the Study of Memory

Remembering Reconsidered, the new ecologically-oriented study of memory, makes contact with more traditional approaches. The problems considered by the authors include memory for randomly selected daily events, for folk ballads, for early childhood experiences, for thoughts, for events known secondhand, for knowledge acquired years before and subjected to "reminding" in the laboratory, and for a variety of stimuli presented with theoretical questions in mind. The theme unifying the contributions, which is developed by the editors in their separate introductory chapters, is concerned with the adaptive significance of memory in daily life together with careful analysis of the variables on which it depends.

In Remembering Reconsidered, the new ecologically oriented study of memory makes contact with more traditional approaches. The emerging result may be what several of the authors have begun to call 'functionalism': a concern with the adaptive significance of memory in ordinary life coupled with a careful analysis of the variables on which it depends. In different ways, the chapters reflect this concern. The editors bring together a diverse collection of studies on remembering, using subjects ranging from folk songs to 'crib talk'. Introductory chapters weave these themes together, developing an underlying sense of the project of the volume as a whole. This is the second volume in the Emory Symposia on Cognition. The Emory Cognition Project, directed by Ulric Neisser, emphasizes an ecological approach to problems in theoretical, experimental, and applied cognitive psychology.

1. New vistas in the study of memory Ulric Neisser; 2. Continuities between ecological and laboratory approaches to memory Eugene Winograd; 3. Memory for randomly sampled autobiographical events William F. Brewer; 4. Ordinary everyday memories: Some of the things of which selves are made Craig R. Barclay and Peggy A. DeCooke; 5. Walking in our own footsteps: Autobiographical memory and reconstruction Robert N. McCauley; 6. Memory observed and memory unobserved Larry L. Jacoby; 7. The maintenance of marginal knowledge Harry P. Bahrick and Elizabeth Phelps; 8. The content and organization of autobiographical memories Lawrence W. Barsalou; 9. The ontogeny of memory for real events Katherine Nelson; 10. The functions of event memory: Some comments on Nelson and Barsalou Robyn Fivush; 11. 'The Wreck of the Old 97': A real event remembered in song Wanda T. Wallace and David C. Rubin; 12. Passive remembering Donald P. Spence; 13. Remembering without experiencing: Memory for reported events Steen F. Larsen; 14. What is ordinary memory the memory of? Ulric Neisser; 15. Go for the skill David C. Rubin; Indexes.

In Remembering Reconsidered, the new ecologically oriented study of memory makes contact with more traditional approaches. The editors bring together a diverse collection of studies on remembering, using subjects ranging from folk songs to 'crib talk'.