Contextualizing Human Memory: An interdisciplinary approach to understanding how individuals and groups remember the past

235 Pages·2015·1.008 MB·English

by  Charles Stone, Lucas Bietti

Contextualizing Human Memory
This edited collection provides an inter- and intra-disciplinary discussion of the criti-
cal role context plays in how and when individuals and groups remember the past.
International contributors integrate key research from a range of disciplines, includ-
ing social and cognitive psychology, discursive psychology, philosophy/philosophical
psychology and cognitive linguistics, to increase awareness of the central role that
cultural, social and technological contexts play in determining individual and collec-
tive recollections at multiple, yet interconnected, levels of human experience.
Divided into three parts, cognitive and psychological perspectives, social and cul-
tural perspectives, and cognitive linguistics and philosophical perspectives, Stone
and Bietti present a breadth of research on memory in context. Topics covered
include:
(cid:129) the construction of self-identity in memory
(cid:129) flashbulb memories
(cid:129) scaffolding memory
(cid:129) the cultural psychology of remembering
(cid:129) social aspects of memory
(cid:129) the mnemonic consequences of silence
(cid:129) emotion and memory
(cid:129) eyewitness identification
(cid:129) multimodal communication and collective remembering.
Contextualizing Human Memory allows researchers to understand the variety of
work undertaken in related fields, and to appreciate the importance of context in
understanding when, how and what is remembered at any given recollection. The
book will appeal to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields
of cognitive and social psychology, as well as those in related disciplines interested
in learning more about the advancing field of memory studies.
Charles B. Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, USA.
Lucas M. Bietti is an Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation
at the Institute of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Neuchatel.
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Paul M.W. Hackett
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Tim L. Short
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Contextualizing Human Memory
An interdisciplinary approach to understanding how individuals
and groups remember the past
Edited by Charles B. Stone and Lucas Bietti
Contextualizing Human
Memory
An interdisciplinary approach to
understanding how individuals
and groups remember the past
Edited by Charles B. Stone
and Lucas M. Bietti
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 C. Stone and L. Bietti
The right of the editors to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Contextualizing human memory : an interdisciplinary approach to
understanding how individuals and groups remember the past /
edited by Charles B. Stone and Lucas M. Bietti.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Memory—Social aspects. 2. Collective memory. 3. Cognition.
4. Social psychology. I. Stone, Charles B. II. Bietti, Lucas M.
BF378.S65C667 2015
153.12—dc23
2014046234
ISBN: 978-0-415-74122-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-81539-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of illustrations vii
List of contributors viii
1 An introduction to contextualizing human memory 1
CHARLES B. STONE AND LUCAS M. BIETTI
PART I
Cognitive and psychological perspectives 9
2 Contextualizing traumatic memories: the role of
self-identity in the construction of autobiographical
memory in posttraumatic stress disorder 11
ADAM D. BROWN, NICOLE A. KOURI, AND JULIA E. SUPERKA
3 Contextualizing silence: a psychological approach to
understanding the mnemonic consequences of selective
silence in social interactions 23
CHARLES B. STONE
4 Emotional context, rehearsal and memories: the mutual
contributions and possible integration of flashbulb
memory and eyewitness identification research 37
RAFAELE DUMAS AND OLIVIER LUMINET
PART II
Social and cultural perspectives 67
5 Context in the cultural psychology of remembering:
illustrated with a case study of conflict in national
memory 69
IGNACIO BRESCÓ AND BRADY WAGONER
vi Contents
6 Concepts of social context in memory: social scientific
approaches 86
CHRISTIAN GUDEHUS
7 Shared beliefs about world history and cultural context:
a theoretical review and a collective-level analysis 102
DARÍO PÁEZ, MAGDALENA BOBOWIK, JAMES H. LIU,
AND NEKANE BASABE
PART III
Cognitive linguistics and philosophical perspectives 125
8 Contextualizing embodied remembering: autobiographical
narratives and multimodal communication 127
LUCAS M. BIETTI
9 Scaffolded joint action as a micro-foundation of
organizational learning 154
BRIAN R. GORDON AND GEORG THEINER
10 Scaffolding memory: themes, taxonomies, puzzles 187
JOHN SUTTON
PART IV
Conclusion 207
11 The (social) context of memory 209
WILLIAM HIRST
Index 217
Illustrations
Figures
4.1 Model of flashbulb memory and event memory formation
from Finkenauer et al. 49
4.2 Model of flashbulb memory and event memory formation
from Tinti et al. 50
8.1 Structure and duration of the autobiographical episode
across contexts of remembering 133
9.1 The ‘scaffolded joint action’ model 173
Tables
5.1 Examples of the different type of news sources provided
to participants 76
5.2 Thematization of the Basque conflict and subjects’
positionings 80
5.3 Future solutions to the Basque conflict 81
7.1 Cultural dimensions: definitions 104
7.2 Classification of shared beliefs about history 106
7.3 Means and correlations between beliefs about history
and socio-structural and cultural indices 109
8.1 Contexts of embodied remembering 145
Contributors
Nekane Basabe Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the
University of Basque Country in Spain and a member of the Research Group
‘Culture, Cognition and Emotion’ at www.ehu.es/es/web/psicologiasocialcce.
The main topics of her research are: (1) Health social psychology, (2) Migra-
tion, cultural shock, acculturation, and ethnic identities, and (3) Collective
processes of cognition and emotion and cross-cultural social psychology. She
has fifty-three publications in journals, twenty in JCR, twenty-three in SCImago-
SJR and others in Spanish and Latin-American journals. Since 1991 she has
taught several undergraduate and graduate courses: health social psychology,
social psychology, group and organizational social psychology, psychology and
communication. http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4753-4299
Lucas M. Bietti is an Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation
at the Institute of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Neuchatel.
Previously, he was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Telecom ParisTech and an
Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study
in the Humanities (KWI), Essen. In 2011–2012 he was also a Visiting Scholar in
the Department of Language and Communication at VU University Amsterdam.
His research interests include multimodal interaction, alignment, collaborative
remembering, collaborative learning, and embodied and distributed cognition.
Magdalena Bobowik is a Research Fellow in the Department of Social Psychology
and Methodology of Behavioural Sciences at the University of the Basque Country.
Magdalena completed her Ph.D. at the University of the Basque Country and her
undergraduate studies at Warsaw University. Her research interests lie in the area of
psychology of intergroup relations, cross-cultural psychology, political psychology,
and positive psychology. Among other things, her work examines the collective
memory of past collective violence and social representations of history.
Ignacio Brescó is currently working as a postdoc at the Centre for Cultural Psy-
chology, Aalborg University. He received his Ph.D. from the Autonomous
University of Madrid, where he worked as an associate professor until 2014.
His research interests revolve around collective memory and identity, the teach-
ing of history, positioning theory and the narrative mediation of remembering.
Contributors ix
Adam Brown is Professor of Psychology at Sarah Lawrence College and Adjunct
Assistant Professor in the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research Program in
the Department of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine.
He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the New School for Social
Research and completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in brain imaging
at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. His research interests focuses
primarily on using methods from experimental psychology to identify cogni-
tive and neural alterations in post-traumatic stress disorder. He is the recipient
of grants from the National Institutes of Health, US Department of Defense,
Fulbright, and private foundations. His work appears in numerous scholarly
journals, he serves on the editorial board of Memory Studies, and he co-edited
the interdisciplinary volume Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics,
Ethics, and Society.
Rafaele Dumas is Professor of Legal Psychology at the Université Catholique
de Louvain (UCL). She did her Ph.D. at Université Rennes 2 (France) and
a post-doctoral fellowship at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (New York,
USA). Her research interests are anchored in the area of Social Psychology
and Law and related to criminal stereotypes, eyewitness identification, jurors’
decision-making and pre-trial publicity.
Brian Gordon is a strategy and innovation consultant based in San Francisco,
working primarily with firms in high technology and science-based indus-
tries. Currently, his scholarly research is focused on issues related to strate-
gic knowledge creation, joint action and organizational capabilities, and how
firms organize to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. He received his Ph.D.
from Simon Fraser University.
Christian Gudehus is a social psychologist (Ruhr University Bochum, Faculty
of Social Science) whose research has focused on memory studies, reception
studies (with an emphasis on film, exhibitions, and memorials), as well as on
the social psychology of collective violence. He has taught and undertaken
research in several institutions, such as the Ruhr University (Bochum), the
Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (Essen), the Institute for
Culture Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Science,
the Centro de Estudios Sobre Genocido at the Universidad Nacional de Tres
de Febrero (Buenos Aires), Sciences Po (Paris), and the Université de Paris
Ouest–Nanterre La Défense (Paris). He has published widely on the afore-
mentioned and other subjects. Amongst others he co-edited an interdisciplin-
ary Handbook on Memory and Remembrance (with Ariane Eichenberg and
Harald Welzer, 2010) and the Handbook on Violence (with Michaela Christ,
2013). Since 2014 Christian Gudehus has been Editor-in-Chief of Genocide
Studies and Prevention: An International Journal.
William Hirst is Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research.
His main interest has been in exploring the contribution of the cognitive sci-
ences to the study of social memory. He is particularly interested in the social