Memory in Early Childhood: The Emergence of the Historical Self

Memory is the primary form of all mental representation: Other forms such as concepts, categories, schemas, imagination, dreams, pretense, plans, conjectures, stories, even language all derive from memory in some way. From this perspective, memory is a cognitive function or set of functions . Memory systems may reflect different functions [for example, Tulving's (1972, 1983, 1993) proposal of procedural, episodic, and semantic systems]. The functional approach allows us to ask what functions memory serves for the individual at different developmental periods, how these functions change, and how they bear on and are influenced by other aspects of neural, cognitive, and social development. The particular questions that arise within the levels theory outlined in Chapter 3 include: What effect do different representational systems have on memory? And the reverse – What effect does memory (e.g., capacity or system type) have on representational potential? It is sometimes noted that human memory appears to be almost inexhaustible, based on extimates of 1011 neurons in the human brain, each with an average of 3,000 synaptic connections (Flanagan, 1992). Phenomenal memory feats by professional mnemonists (Luria, 1968; Hunt & Love, 1972) demonstrate that through the use of strategies of storing and retrieving words and images, what we think of as natural limits on memory, or ordinary memory constraints, can be expanded almost without limit and remain accessible almost indefinitely. In ancient Greece and Rome such mnemonic systems were extensively developed to aid in rhetoric practices, and were continued into medieval and early modern times.