Does memory development belong on an endangered topic list?
Although memory has long been regarded as a central and well-defined topic within the field of cognitive development, developments in and related to the study of memory increasingly suggest that the study of memory needs to be situated in a number of broader conceptual and research contexts. Four of these contexts are identified here and the ways they accommodate memory phenomena are examined: (1) knowledge (what is remembered?); (2) comprehension (what does it mean?); (3) context/function (why remember?); and (4) strategy (how to remember?). Memories, it is suggested, are best examined as knowledge structures that are the product of efforts to understand and to know, and memorizing is a socially situated activity undertaken in the service of individual or social goals.
Kuhn
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Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. dk100@columbia.edu
D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D002666:Psychology, Child