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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:
• the construction of self-identity in memory

• flashbulb memories
• scaffolding memory
• the cultural psychology of remembering
• social aspects of memory
• the mnemonic consequences of silence
• emotion and memory
• eyewitness identification
• 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.
Explorations in Cognitive Psychology Series
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Progress in vision research
Edited by Adam Geremek, Mark Greenlee and Svein Magnussen
Fine Art and Perceptual Neuroscience

Field of Vision and the Painted Grid
Paul M.W. Hackett
Simulation Theory
A psychological and philosophical approach
Tim L. Short
Neuropsycholinguistic Perspectives on Language Cognition

Essays in honour of Jean-Luc Nespoulous
Edited by Corine Artésano and Mélanie Jucla
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
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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

C H ARLES B. S T O NE A ND L U CA S M. BIET T I
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
AD AM D . BRO WN, NICO L E A . KO U RI, A ND JULIA E. SUPER K A
3 Contextualizing silence: a psychological approach to

understanding the mnemonic consequences of selective
silence in social interactions 23
C H ARLES B. S T O NE
4 Emotional context, rehearsal and memories: the mutual

contributions and possible integration of flashbulb
memory and eyewitness identification research 37
RAF AEL E D U MA S A ND O L IVIER L U MINET
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
I G N ACI O B RES CÓ A ND BRA DY WA GO NER
vi Contents
6 Concepts of social context in memory: social scientific
approaches 86
CH RI S TI AN GU DEH U S
7 Shared beliefs about world history and cultural context:

a theoretical review and a collective-level analysis 102
D ARÍ O P ÁE Z, MA GDA L ENA BO BO WIK, JA MES H. LIU,
AN D N E KAN E BA S A BE
PART III
Cognitive linguistics and philosophical perspectives 125
8 Contextualizing embodied remembering: autobiographical

narratives and multimodal communication 127
L U C AS M . B IET T I
9 Scaffolded joint action as a micro-foundation of

organizational learning 154
BRI AN R. G O RDO N A ND GEO RG T HEINER
10 Scaffolding memory: themes, taxonomies, puzzles 187

J O H N S U TT O N
PART IV
Conclusion 207
11 The (social) context of memory 209

W I L L I AM H IRS T
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
x Contributors
aspects of forgetting and its role in the formation of collective memories. In
addition, he has investigated over the last ten years people’s evolving memo-
ries of the attack of 11 September 2001. His graduate training was at Cornell
University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1976. He taught at Rockefeller Univer-
sity, Princeton University, and Cornell University before coming to the New
School. He has edited four volumes and published over 120 articles, on topics
that include not just the social aspects of collective and individual memory, but
also attention and the neuropsychology of memory. His research has received
support from NIH, NSF, and the McDonnell and Russell Sage foundations.
He also directed a programme to revive psychology in Romania after the fall
of communism.
Nicole Kouri is a Project Manager in the PTSD Research Program in the

Department of Psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. She
completed her B.A., with an emphasis on psychology and neuroscience, at
Sarah Lawrence College. She has published and presented research on autobi-
ographical memory in older adults, PTSD, Complicated Grief, Future Think-
ing, and Social Contexts.
James Hou-fu Liu is Professor of Psychology at Victoria University of Welling-

ton, New Zealand, and Co-Director of its Centre for Applied Cross Cultural
Research (www.victoria.ac.nz/cacr). His bachelor’s degree was in Computer
Science from University of Illinois. He worked as an aerospace engineer, then
completed a Ph.D. in social psychology at UCLA, and post-doc at Florida
Atlantic University. His research is in social, cross-cultural and political psychol-
ogy, specializing in social representations of history and their relationship to
identity politics. He has more than 150 refereed publications, and is currently
President of the Asian Association of Social Psychology. A naturalized citizen
of two countries, he describes himself as a ‘Chinese-American-New Zealander’.
Olivier Luminet is research director at the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research
(FRS-FNRS), full professor in psychology at the Université Catholique de
Louvain (UCL) and associate professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles
(ULB) in Belgium. He also did long research/education stays at the University
of Toulouse (France), Manchester (UK) and Toronto (Canada). A first part of
his research activity is related to examining the interactions between emotion,
personality and health.
The other part is dedicated to the links between emotion, identity and
memories (both individual and collective). He has conducted several stud-
ies on cognitive and emotional determinants of flashbulb memories and its
impact on collective memory. He published with A. Curci “Flashbulb memo-
ries. New issues and new perspectives” (2009). He was also the editor of a
special issue of Memory Studies on “The interplay between collective memory
and the erosion of nation states. The paradigmatic case of Belgium” (2012).
His current activities includes coordinating a large interdisciplinary project
on « Recognition and resentment : experiences and memories of the Great
Contributors xi
War in Belgium ». He also supervises a project on the intergenerational trans-
mission of memories, and another one on the foresight bias and causal, emo-
tional and temporal approach of historical analogies.
Darío Páez is Professor of Social Psychology at Basque Country University in
San Sebastián and Director of the group ‘Research Culture, Cognition and
Emotion and UFI Psychology of the Twenty-first Century’. He was born
in Antofagasta, Chile in 1952. He completed his Ph.D. in social psychology
in 1983 at University of Louvain, Belgium. He has been at Basque Country
University since 1984. His main topics are collective processes of cognition
and emotion and cross-cultural social psychology, currently focused on the
overcoming of political conflicts, collective memory, reconciliation and rituals
of transitional justice. He has more than fifty publications in ISI journals, and
his edited volumes include Collective Memories of Political Events (with J. Pen-
nebaker and B. Rimé, 1997) and he edited with J. De Rivera a monograph on
‘Emotional Climate, Human Security and Culture of Peace’ in the Journal of
Social Issues (2007).
Charles B. Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, USA. He
earned his doctorate in Cognitive Science at the Macquarie Centre for Cog-
nitive Science at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia (2011). For his
Ph.D. thesis he was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation as a result
of it being ranked in the top 5 per cent of all theses reviewed by three external,
eminent scholars in the field of memory studies. His research generally focuses
on understanding how autobiographical, collective memories and individu-
als’ confidence in said memories are shaped through social interactions. He
recently was awarded three different grants: an NSF grant to examine jury
decision-making, a City University of New York Collaborative Incentive Grant
(CIRG) to examine the divergent roles played by prejudice and dehumaniza-
tion in the decision-making process throughout the judicial system, and a
PSC-CUNY grant to examine how 9/11 memories are transmitted to the
next generation. His research has been published in top psychology journals
including Perspectives on Psychological Science, the Journal of Experimental Psy-
chology: General, and Psychological Science.
Julia E. Superka is a Research Assistant in Professor Richard Bryant’s laboratory
in the School of Psychology, University of New South Wales. She is currently
working on a number of studies employing behavioural and brain imaging
studies techniques in PTSD. She has presented and published research on
memory and future thinking in Complicated Grief and PTSD.
John Sutton is Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Cognitive Sci-
ence at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is author of Philosophy and Memory
Traces: Descartes to Connectionism, and coeditor of the journal Memory Stud-
ies. His current research addresses collaborative and social memory, perspec-
tive in autobiographical memory, skilled movement, and cognitive history,
xii Contributors
and has been published in journals such as Psychology of Music, Frontiers in
Human Neuroscience, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Experimental
Brain Research, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Textual Practice, and Discourse
Processes.
Georg Theiner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, and an
affiliated member of the Cognitive Science Program, at Villanova University.
He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy, with a Joint Ph.D. in Cognitive Science,
at Indiana University in 2008. Before joining Villanova in 2011, he was a Kil-
lam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta. He also holds degrees
in Philosophy and Theoretical Linguistics from the University of Vienna. He
works primarily in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, with occasional
forays into metaphysics and philosophy of science.
Brady Wagoner is Professor MSO at the Centre for Cultural Psychology, Aal-
borg University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge,
where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar and co-creator of the F. C. Bartlett
Internet Archive and journal Psychology and Society. He is also Associate Editor
of Culture and Psychology and Peace and Conflict. His books include Sym-
bolic Transformation (Routledge, 2010), Dialogicality in Focus (Nova, 2011),
Culture and Social Change (Info Age, 2012), Development as a Social Process
(Routledge, 2013), Cultural Psychology and Its Future (Info Age, 2014) and
Integrating Experiences (Info Age, 2015). He is currently working on a single-
authored book titled The Constructive Mind: Frederic Bartlett’s Psychology in
Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press) and editing the Oxford Hand-
book of Culture and Memory.
1 An introduction to
contextualizing human
memory
Charles B. Stone and Lucas M. Bietti
In developing a book examining the mnemonic influence of context, it is fair to

say we have set out on an ambitious endeavor. This is not because it will be dif-
ficult to persuade the reader of the importance of context in shaping the way the
past is remembered. Rather, our task will be arduous simply because ‘context’ is,
on the surface at once an ambiguous and, at the same time, encapsulating term,
both in its conceptualization and operationalization. Its ambiguity stems from
an imprecise delineation of what researchers actually mean by context and why
they choose one particular aspect of context over another. For example, is it the
mood someone is in? Is it the physical room in which the recollection occurs?
The people around them and/or who are communicating with them? Is it the
gestures they use or witness? Or is it ‘everything’ (Engel 2000)? This leads us to
the encapsulating aspect of context: if context is omnipresent and multilayered
(i.e., interpersonal, intrapersonal, environmental, etc.), how does one examine its
impact? Can researchers ‘control’ for certain contexts in order to examine how
some contexts influence remembering relative to others? Do some aspects of a
particular context facilitate recollections better than others? And vice versa?
Despite these questions, no one doubts that memories are shaped by the con-
texts in which they are formed and later remembered; indeed, researchers have
long known the importance of context in shaping memories (see, e.g., Bartlett
1932). In a very real sense, it is impossible to overstate the importance of context
in shaping the way individuals and groups encode, store and retrieve memories.
For example, Susan Engel (2000) captures this nicely in her aptly titled book
Context Is Everything, where she details the ubiquity and importance of context
when remembering the past. The title of Engel’s book also works at two levels:
the importance of context in understanding how the past is remembered and,
quite literally, context is everything: from the beating of one’s heart to their
delineation in space and time. This latter point speaks to the emphasis of this
book: if context is everywhere then the question becomes, how do particular
contexts shape the way individuals and groups remember the past? How do we
measure it? How do we control for it? How do we capture all of its mnemonic
influences? The answers to these questions are not simple and pose important
problems for those researchers interested in how individuals and groups remem-
ber the past. In which contexts are memories likely to be more accurate, more
2 Charles B. Stone and Lucas M. Bietti
confident, more distorted and in which ways? Furthermore, are particular aspects
of any given context more relevant to the act of recollection? For example, the
fact that the speaker is speaking to a close friend and/or is paying attention to
what the speaker is saying (e.g., mutual gaze and backchannel mechanisms like
‘ok’, ‘hmm’, etc.) is probably a more relevant and important aspect of the context
than the number of chairs in the room, for example, but why and in what ways?
One primary aim of this book is to begin to help answer some of these questions
from an interdisciplinary perspective.
From the field of psychology, we do know that the more similar the context
is at retrieval with the context at encoding, the better the recollection (see God-
den and Baddeley 1975; Tulving and Thomson 1973; see also Surprenant and
Neath 2009). At the same time, when the social context at encoding and retrieval
differ, be it by changes in beliefs, mood or environment, the more the memory
is altered – either through omissions, commissions or both (see, for example,
Bartlett 1932). Psychologists, to this day, continue to examine context and how
it shapes the way the past is remembered (see, e.g., Pastötter and Bäuml 2007;
Sahakyan and Kelley 2002; Vaidya et al. 2002). In much of this research, context
has been used as code for ecological validity, bringing psychological research out
from the lab into the real world. But, as the chapters in this book make clear,
context is dynamic and comprises myriad different factors. Therefore, to truly
appreciate the way context shapes and reshapes memories, it is incumbent upon
memory researchers to delineate the types of contexts and how they shape the
way individuals and groups remember the past.
In 2012 we organized a workshop aimed at examining the many different ways
researchers from across the social sciences conceptualized and operationalized
‘context’. From this workshop we co-edited a Special Issue of Memory Studies
on this topic. But as with most research within the social sciences, progress takes
time. Thus, based on the success of that Special Issue, we believed it was perti-
nent to continue this line of research by collating more researchers to provide an
interdisciplinary platform to display and acknowledge the different ways in which
researchers understand and study how individuals and groups remember the past
within particular contexts. The contributions to this book, as well as the Special
Issue of Memory Studies, are the fruits of this labor.
The contributions to this book, as is often the case in the social sciences, build
on and extend the research discussed in the Special Issue of Memory Studies.
Similarly to the Special Issue, the present book integrates cutting-edge research
from memory scholars across disparate disciplines who, in general, have remained
largely ignorant of each other’s research. Thus, a central goal of this book is to
extend the work of our Special Issue and explicitly examine how different but
interrelated contexts (e.g., intercorporal, psychological, philosophical, linguis-
tic, conversational, societal, and political) shape the way individuals and groups
remember the past in natural, applied and experimental settings. To this end, this
book brings together diverse perspectives in memory research – from cultural,
social and cognitive psychologists, to philosophers and linguists. In doing so,
we hope and believe that the sum of this book will ultimately provide not only
a description of the breadth of memory studies research being conducted across
Introduction 3
disciplines, but also a better understanding of how different contexts shape the
way individuals and groups remember the past, and help continue to build a basis
for an interdisciplinary model of how the past is remembered.
Underlying each of the chapters in this book (either implicitly or explicitly) is
the concept of episodic memory (Rubin 2006; Tulving 2002). Episodic memo-
ries are critical in the way humans define themselves and assign meaning to the
world. From the here and now, episodic memory enables us to reconstruct and
re-encounter autobiographical experiences which have occurred throughout the
course of our lives. Furthermore, episodic memories allow humans to project
themselves into the future by making predictions and inferences that allow them
to anticipate possible, future outcomes (e.g. Schacter and Addis 2007). Several
studies on autobiographical memory and embodied cognition (Glenberg 1997;
Rubin 2006) have claimed that individual representations of past experiences are
formed by the interplay of multimodal components – merging the coordination
of kinesthetic, visual, auditory, haptic, spatial, affective and linguistic memory
traces. Thus, the reconstruction of an episodic memory ‘involves simulating its
multimodal components together’ (Barsalou 2008: 623). These claims are in
accordance with the research that suggests that the personal experiences on which
autobiographical memories are based are always situated within socially, materi-
ally and spatiotemporally localized contexts (Glenberg 1997; Rubin 2006).
In other words, when individuals and groups remember the past, they do so
in particular, diverse and complex contexts. And each and every aspect of these
contexts has important influences on the way that individuals and groups remem-
ber the past. Each of the chapters in this book attempts to delineate particular
contexts from a particular perspective and illustrate how said contexts play an
important role in shaping how the past is remembered. Our book concludes with
a chapter by William Hirst, where he manages to distill the important themes
and issues raised throughout the book. It is through each of these chapters, the
book itself and our Special Issue of Memory Studies that we hope to continue an
open dialogue with researchers across disciplines so that we may one day develop
a truly interdisciplinary model of how individuals and groups remember the past.
Contributions to this book

The book is composed of three parts. Part I is comprised of chapters examining
context from cognitive and psychological perspectives; Part II is comprised of
chapters examining context from social and cultural perspectives; and Part III is
comprised of chapters examining context from linguistic and philosophical per-
spectives with a particular emphasis on the importance of scaffolding (i.e., ‘in the
world’ artifacts facilitating remembrance).
Part I
Part I begins with Chapter 2, in which Brown, Kouri and Superka examine how
context shapes the construction and reconstruction of autobiographical memo-
ries after trauma and, in turn, shapes the course of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD). In particular, they argue for the importance of self-identity and self-
appraisal in this process, a critical area of research which the authors emphasize is
in need of further study.
Next, in Chapter 3, Stone examines the importance of context in understand-
ing how selective silence in a social interaction may lead both the speaker and the
listener to forget the past (Stone et al. 2012). To this end, Stone begins by out-
lining a basic, individual memory paradigm known as retrieval-induced forget-
ting. He then shows how this individual memory paradigm has been extended
to social interactions. That is, what is left selectively silent can induce both the
speaker and listener to forget the past. However, this is not always the case.
Stone highlights two critical contexts in which forgetting, as a result of selec-
tive silence, is moderated. In doing so, he argues that the context in which the
selective silence occurs merely provides the potential for forgetting and thus, if
the speaker and listener do not undertake the necessary mnemonic processes,
regardless of context, there should not be any induced forgetting on the part of
the speaker or the listener.
In Chapter 4, Dumas and Luminet provide a novel approach to examining
context by attempting to bridge two disparate yet related fields of research: eye-
witness testimony (e.g., memory of a perpetrator) and flashbulb memory (e.g.,
remembering where you were when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred). In
doing so, they find many similarities across the fields of study which provide
insights into the mnemonic processes which occur within each context and pro-
vide extremely useful fodder for future interdisciplinary research.
Part II
In Chapter 5, Brescó and Wagoner explore how different perspectives can lead
to different appraisals and memories of similar events from a cultural, psychologi-
cal approach. To this end, Brescó and Wagoner examine the memories different
Spaniards have of the peace process of 2006 in the Basque Country. In doing so,
they find that the way the Spaniards thematize the Basque conflict more generally
shapes the way they remember and interpret the peace process of 2006. Here,
Brescó and Wagoner importantly emphasize the active nature of remembering.
Based on our present beliefs and context, individuals actively reconstruct the
past, leading to particular types of memories in the present.
In Chapter 6, Gudehus provides a summarization of the importance of
(1) transmission, (2) appropriation, and (3) practice in understanding how indi-
viduals and groups remember the past. In terms of (1) transmission, he focuses
on the importance of the actual, physical communicative context in which the
actual memory is being remembered; (2) appropriation reflects the importance
of how the individuals in the communicative context relate to their social and
physical environment through their actions; and (3) practice emphasizes the
routinization of particular physical and mental activities which can lead to par-
ticular types of procedural memories at the individual level and societal level
(e.g., traditions).
Introduction 5
In Chapter 7, Páez, Bobowik, Liu and Basabe examine the variability of lay
beliefs individuals hold of world history across forty different counties. They find
that, while there does appear to be a general collective, hegemonic representation
of history, by appreciating the various socio-cultural contexts across the coun-
tries, a more nuanced pattern of the way world history is represented emerges,
delineating the various ways different cultures make sense of how and why his-
tory unfolds as it does.
Part III
In Chapter 8, Bietti examines how autobiographical remembering is shaped
within the context of multimodal collaborations. In order to do so, he provides
a micro-qualitative analysis integrating the use of verbal and co-verbal resources
while an individual remembers a specific, autobiographical episode in four differ-
ent contexts of remembering over an eight-week period. Bietti finds that changes
in the autobiographical narrative of the same episode correlate with changes in
the use of bodily resources. Furthermore, he demonstrates that in the sections in
which the autobiographical narratives remain stable across contexts, so does the
use of bodily resources when describing those events.
In Chapter 9, Gordon and Theiner propose the ‘Scaffolded Joint Action’
model as a way of making sense of, not only the definition of organizational
learning, but also how it works. To this end, the authors cogently and meticu-
lously take the reader through the transitions from individual action through
shared collaborative activities to organizational action. As Gordon and Theiner
expertly navigate these transitions they highlight the importance of each transi-
tion and its relevance in understanding how humans can form collaborative inter-
actions and organizational learning.
In Chapter 10, through a selective historical, theoretical, and critical survey
of the various uses of the concept of scaffolding over the past thirty years, Sut-
ton introduces the background to the idea of memory scaffolding. He traces the
development of the concept across developmental psychology, educational the-
ory, and cognitive anthropology, and its adoption in the interdisciplinary field of
distributed cognition in the 1990s. Responding to criticisms that the metaphor
of scaffolding retains an overly individualist vision of cognition, Sutton defends
the productivity of the concept in contemporary philosophy, cognitive science,
and psychology, and concludes by suggesting further avenues for research on the
interaction of various distinctive forms of scaffolding of human remembering.
Concluding chapter
In Chapter 11, our concluding chapter, Hirst distills the relevant and common
themes that have been discussed throughout the book. He integrates the various
interdisciplinary studies of the individual chapters and emphasizes why interdis-
ciplinary and multi-scale approaches to remembering and context at different
time-scales (e.g., conversations, epoch-changing events and historical processes)
are needed to better understand the ways in which context shapes memories and
memories shape future contexts.
Continuing toward an interdisciplinary/contextualized model

of how humans remember the past
As can be seen by the various methodologies, vernaculars and interpretations of
exactly what is meant by both ‘remembering’ and ‘contexts’, attempting to find
a holistic, interdisciplinary model of how the past is remembered by integrating
them all is a difficult and lofty endeavor. However, rather than shy away from
such an arduous task, researchers must embrace, understand and negotiate these
cross-disciplinary differences. For, as should be abundantly clear by now, we
believe an interdisciplinary approach toward understanding how individuals and
groups remember the past is the present and future of memory studies. Singer
and Conway (2014) have underscored this point elsewhere:
we must also acknowledge that to be human is to be part of a biological

reality that extends beyond our conscious awareness – to be human is to be
embedded in networks of intimate and more extended relationships – to be
human is to belong to a larger collective that helps to shape our memory and
that remembers with us. This variety of individuality, corporality, and com-
munity takes us toward a more comprehensive and accurate understanding
of how memory in the human species works.
(p. 391)
Singer and Conway highlighted this point in our previous Special Issue on the
topic of ‘Remembering in Context’. That Special Issue was part of the beginning
of what we hope will lead towards the development of a more interdisciplin-
ary and inter-contextual approach to memory studies. The research in this book
continues in this tradition. It is our hope that our Special Issue and this edited
book will continue to drive a dialogue across disciplines to provide a truly inter-
disciplinary model of how and in what ways context shapes the way individuals
and groups remember the past or, to put it in the elegant words of Singer and
Conway, to provide ‘a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of how
memory in the human species works’ (p. 391).
References
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617–645.
Bartlett, FC 1932. Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology, Cam-
bridge University Press, Cambridge.
Engel, S 2000. Context is everything: The nature of memory, W. H. Freeman and
Company, New York.
Glenberg, AM 1997. ‘What memory is for’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences vol. 20,
pp. 1–55.
Introduction 7
Godden, DR and Baddeley, AD 1975. ‘Context-dependent memory in two natural
environments: On land and underwater’, British Journal of Psychology vol. 66, pp.
325–331.
Pastötter, B and Bäuml, K-H 2007. ‘The crucial role of postcue encoding in directed
forgetting and context-dependent forgetting’, Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition vol. 33, pp. 977–982.
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chological Science vol. 1, pp. 277–311.
Sahakyan, L and Kelley, CM 2002. ‘A contextual change account of the directed for-
getting effect’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni-
tion vol. 28, pp. 1060–1072.
Schacter, DL and Addis, DR 2007. ‘The cognitive neuroscience of constructive mem-
ory: Remembering the past and imagining the future’, Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society B vol. 362, pp. 773–786.
Singer, JA and Conway, MA 2014. ‘The varieties of remembered experience: Moving
memory beyond the bounded self’, Memory Studies vol. 7, pp. 385–392.
Stone, CB, Coman, A, Brown, AD, Koppel, J and Hirst, W 2012. ‘Toward a science
of silence: The consequences of leaving a memory unsaid’, Perspectives on Psycho-
logical Science vol. 7, pp. 39–53.
Surprenant, AM and Neath, I 2009. Principles of memory, Psychology Press, New
York.
Tulving, E 2002. ‘Episodic memory: From mind to brain’, Annual Review of Psychol-
ogy vol. 53, pp. 1–25.
Tulving, E and Thomson, DM 1973. ‘Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in
episodic memory’, Psychological Review vol. 80, pp. 352–373.
Vaidya, CJ, Zhao, M, Desmond, JE and Gabrieli, JDE 2002. ‘Evidence for cortical
encoding specificity in episodic memory: Memory-induced re-activation of picture
processing areas’, Neuropsychologia, vol. 40, pp. 2136–2143.
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Part I
Cognitive and psychological

perspectives
2 Contextualizing traumatic
memories
The role of self-identity in the
construction of autobiographical
memory in posttraumatic stress
disorder1
Adam D. Brown, Nicole A. Kouri,
and Julia E. Superka
It is now well established that autobiographical memory is not a literal record of

the past. Rather it is a constructive process guided by internal and external factors
(e.g. Bartlett, 1932; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Hirst and Manier, 2008;
Schacter, 1996). However, as the chapters in this volume highlight, the complex
ways in which context affects memory is not fully understood. It is an area of
memory research that is ripe for careful investigation and could provide memory
scholars with opportunities to move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries
(e.g. Coman et al., 2009). Along these lines, there’s a need to better understand
the role of context in the construction of autobiographical memory in individu-
als with clinical disorders. Although disturbances in autobiographical memory
are widely known in clinical populations (e.g. Williams et al., 2007), a limited
amount of research has focused on how different contexts affect autobiographical
memory in relation to the pathogenesis of these disorders.
One disorder of particular relevance to the study of autobiographical mem-
ory is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a disorder that has been
characterized by alterations and disturbances in autobiographical memory (e.g.
McNally, 2004). In fact, unlike other disorders in the Diagnostic and Statisti-
cal Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), the
presence of distressing autobiographical memories associated with the traumatic
event(s) is a requisite for a diagnosis. Additionally, the most effective treatments
to date, such as exposure therapy, involve the repeated recollection of traumatic
autobiographical memories in therapy. Consequently, the past twenty-five years
have witnessed considerable amounts of research examining the cognitive and
neural alterations associated with autobiographical memory in PTSD. Such find-
ings have played an important role in the better understanding and treatment
of the disorder. Despite the tremendous progress that has been made, however,
additional research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying trau-
matic memory, as interventions to prevent the onset of PTSD have been met with
limited success. Indeed, a significant number of individuals never fully recover
from the disorder (e.g. Ehlers et al., 1998).
12 Adam D. Brown, Nicole A. Kouri, and Julia E. Superka
Given the importance of autobiographical memory in PTSD, this chapter
examines a relatively under-studied way in which context may shape memory in
the wake of a traumatic event and the extent to which this might be an impor-
tant predictor in outcomes to trauma, namely, beliefs and appraisals about
one’s self. Outside of clinical research, there is an extensive literature spanning
multiple subfields of psychology that emphasizes the role of the self in the
construction of autographical memory. For example, developmental theories
have proposed that self-knowledge is a requisite for the emergence of autobio-
graphical memory (e.g. Howe and Courage, 1997). Additionally, numerous
theories have posited the active role of current self-views in the construction of
the past and autobiographical narratives (e.g. Berntsen and Rubin, 2004; Con-
way and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Fitzgerald, 1988; Greenwald, 1980; Kihlstrom
and Cantor, 1984; McAdams, 2001; Pillemer, 1998; Wilson and Ross, 2001).
Although theorists have posited that trauma-related autobiographical memories
are characteristically different from other kinds of autobiographical memories
(e.g. Freud, 1922; Janet, 1925; Herman, 1992; van der Kolk, 1996), others have
proposed that memories of traumatic events are not ‘special’, and thus can be
conceptualized in line with findings from non-clinical studies (e.g. Porter and
Birt, 2001; Rubin et al., 2008). Therefore, in line with the latter, cognitive
models, emphasizing the role of the self in guiding the construction of autobio-
graphical memories in non-clinical populations could apply to trauma-related
memories as well.
We will begin by grounding our discussion within the Self-Memory System
(SMS, Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) before surveying advances in clinical
theory and experimental research that might bear on the onset, maintenance and
treatment of PTSD.
Self-memory system in PTSD

The SMS, one of the most influential cognitive models of autobiographical
memory and self-identity, highlights the reciprocal nature of these processes.
According to the SMS model, an individual’s autobiographical memory is situ-
ated within the self and its goals. It is defined both contextually and conceptually
at multiple levels of abstraction ranging from (more general to the specific): life
story schemas, lifetime periods, general events, and episodic details. The four
categories that comprise the autobiographical knowledge base are hierarchi-
cally organized and based on levels of specificity: lifetime schemas are defined as
‘knowledge about one’s global personal history like “my career as a scientist”’
(Hauer, 2008, p. 9; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000); whereas lifetime peri-
ods, such as, ‘when I went to college’ are less broad. General events are both
thematically and temporally more specific; for example, ‘I spent my junior year of
college in Italy.’ The last and most specific level of the autobiographical knowl-
edge base includes episodic details, such as distinct sights, sounds and tastes that
someone recalls about the event (e.g. ‘spending the afternoon hiking among the
vineyards of the Cinque Terre in Italy’).
Contextualizing traumatic memories 13
The working self, another component of the SMS, is involved in the encod-
ing, construction and retrieval of an autobiographical memory by controlling the
ways in which information contained in the autobiographical knowledge base
is integrated to meet the needs of the current self, including its goals (Con-
way and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). The bidirectional interactions between the
autobiographical knowledge base and the working self secure consistent self-
appraisals and self-representations within an individual (Conway, 2005; Conway
and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Memory provides a person the necessary material or
‘memories’ to build a conceptual sense of self, but that sense of self determines
the accessibility, content and evaluation of the past.
Concepts of the self in PTSD

Although researchers have more recently begun examining the connections
between the self and autobiographical memory in PTSD, the concept of the self
is prevalent in theoretical models of PTSD, including, but not limited to, the
emotional processing theory (e.g. Foa and Rothbaum, 1998), the dual repre-
sentation theory (Brewin et al., 1996), and Ehlers and Clark’s (2000) cognitive
model. For example, Foa et al. (1989) argued that traumatic memories associated
with PTSD are unique in their disruptive power. Foa and Riggs (1993) and Foa
and Rothbaum (1998) later argued that an additional, contributing factor to
the development of PTSD is the degree to which a person’s self and world views
are inflexible before, during and after the traumatic event: the rigidity, not the
emotional valence of perceptions, negatively impacts the course of the disorder.
That being said, a person’s negative appraisals of his or her condition can con-
tribute to their rigidity. Similarly, Ehlers and Clark (2000) propose that PTSD
is maintained, in part, because negative appraisals about one’s self increase the
accessibility and content of distressing autobiographical memories, which in turn
promote avoidance behavior. Moreover, Brewin and his colleagues (1996) sug-
gest that PTSD reflects the failure to integrate sensory-based aspects of the event
into a verbally-based system. They argue that sensory-based traumatic informa-
tion that is not contextualized into one’s autobiographical narrative may be less
under conscious control, and more easily triggered and experienced as an intru-
sive memory.
Trauma centrality
Grounded in theory and findings from basic memory research, Berntsen and
Rubin (2006) have suggested that the onset of PTSD is the result of a traumatic
memory’s increased accessibility. Traumatic events, like other personally signifi-
cant events, may serve as turning points in a person’s life, redirecting its course
(Pillemer, 1998). Berntsen and Rubin (2006) propose that the disruptive nature
of a trauma drives its convergence with the self and by extension its accessibility
to the self. In doing so, the traumatic event is translated into an internal refer-
ence point for non-traumatic experiences and future goals (Berntsen and Rubin,
2007). In accordance with their argument, Berntsen and Rubin (2006) devel-
oped the Centrality of Event Scale (CES) in order to measure the prominence
of an event in one’s life story. Within a large sample of undergraduate students,
Berntsen and Rubin found that CES correlated with PTSD symptom severity and
depression, with the implication being that ‘trauma centrality’ increases the acces-
sibility of trauma-related autobiographical memories, which in turn, increases the
symptom severity of PTSD.
Studies involving veterans with PTSD (Brown et al., 2010) and adult survivors
of childhood sexual abuse (Robinaugh and McNally, 2011) have found simi-
lar results. Among a sample of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraq
Freedom combat veterans, Brown et al. (2010) found that CES scores predicted
PTSD symptom severity even when the researchers controlled for depression.
Robinaugh and McNally (2011) also found that the CES scores of women report-
ing histories of childhood sexual abuse correlated with PTSD symptom severity,
depression severity and self-esteem. Robinaugh and McNally also showed that
within CES, three main concepts were associated with increased PTSD symp-
tomatology: the extent to which (1) the trauma is integrated into a person’s self-
identity, (2) it becomes a turning point in one’s life story, and (3) it is believed to
determine future life events. The third factor was the most dominant predictor
in the analysis.
Research on trauma centrality contradicts, on the surface, the traditional view
that the memory of the traumatic experience exists outside of the autobiographi-
cal knowledge base, without any contextual or temporal organization, is resistant
to voluntary recall and is generally lacking in detail – a phenomenon known as
OverGeneral Memory (OGM). OGM is the systematic recall of repeated events
and/or events lasting longer than one day in response to cue words, versus (in
accordance with the directions of the task), recalling memories of specific, auto-
biographical events lasting no longer than one day (Williams et al., 2007). OGM
has been found to be associated with psychological disorders such as depression,
PTSD and Acute Stress Disorder (ASD) (Moore and Zoellner, 2007; Williams
et al., 2007) but less so with exposure to trauma in and of itself. It should be
noted that if a traumatic experience qualifies as a momentous event, it should, like
any other, be remembered in great detail (Berntsen and Rubin, 2006). Brewin
(2011) argued that this apparent paradox is the result of a failure to distinguish
between conceptual knowledge and episodic memory.
Overgeneralized autobiographical memory

OGM in PTSD has been reported across various trauma-exposed populations,
including Vietnam veterans (McNally et al., 1995), cancer survivors (Kangas
et al., 2005) and injured individuals with Acute Stress Disorder (Harvey et al.,
1998). More specifically, OGM has been associated with the onset and mainte-
nance of PTSD symptoms. Bryant et al. (2007) found that firefighters exhibiting
OGM at baseline were more likely to develop PTSD following trauma exposure.
Overgenerality in PTSD has also been associated with impaired social problem
solving; suggesting that OGM may contribute to symptom maintenance (Suther-
land and Bryant, 2008). In contrast, after receiving cognitive behavioral ther-
apy for PTSD, participants who exhibited a remission in PTSD symptoms also
showed more specificity in memory retrieval (Sutherland and Bryant, 2007).
In a study of autobiographical memory among Vietnam veterans with and
without PTSD, McNally and his colleagues (1995) observed that those diag-
nosed with PTSD who wore battle regalia exhibited more OGM compared with
those diagnosed with PTSD who did not wear Vietnam War regalia and con-
trol subjects. Additionally, subjects with PTSD who displayed battle insignia had
slower memory retrieval rates than both control subjects and PTSD subjects who
wore civilian clothing (McNally et al., 1995). The authors suggested that the
wearing of regalia several decades after the war may have reflected a sense of self
tied to the past and unable to imagine the future. In support of this hypothesis,
Brown et al. (2013) found that combat veterans recalled and imagined personal
events with less episodic specificity.
Self-defining memories
According to the SMS model (Conway, 2005; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce,
2000), the working self and episodic memory are independent but not mutu-
ally exclusive of each other. The working self guides the selective recall of self-
defining autobiographical memories that are ‘affectively intense, repetitive, vivid,
and comprise enduring concerns about oneself’ (Singer and Salovey, 1993; as
cited in Sutherland and Bryant, 2008, p. 593). PTSD is characterized by a hyper-
awareness of suspected threats; as part of a person’s conceptual knowledge, this
hyperarousal motivates an individual to selectively retrieve memories of nega-
tive experiences (Sutherland and Bryant, 2005). In support of this hypothesis,
Sutherland and Bryant (2005) examined the self-defining memories of subjects
with PTSD, trauma-exposed subjects without PTSD, and non-trauma-exposed
controls, and found that subjects with PTSD retrieved more negative, trauma-
related, self-defining memories (Sutherland and Bryant, 2005). The authors
(Sutherland and Bryant, 2005) explain, however, that all trauma-exposed partici-
pants did experience the traumatic event(s) during the reminiscence bump, the
period from 10 to 30 years of age during which individuals tend to retrieve most
memories (Neisser and Libby, 2000). Therefore, these memories might have
been more accessible, not because they were traumatic, but because they were
encoded during a period from which people retrieve most of their self-defining
memories. That being said, compared with trauma-exposed participants without
PTSD, those with PTSD recalled fewer positive memories.
Lastly, when participants were asked to share personal goals the researchers
predicted and found that a focus on goals and/or expectations relating to the
traumatic experience was directly proportional to the number of self-defining,
negative and trauma-related memories retrieved by the participant. Examples of
trauma-focused goals included, ‘I want to be safe again. I want to have no pain’
(Sutherland and Bryant, 2005, p. 596).
Self-appraisals and PTSD
Research on self-identity emphasizes the impact of the traumatic memory on
one’s self-identity and the impact that this has on PTSD’s symptomatology and
chronicity. Related areas that stand out and require further research are the tem-
poral self, discrepancy of selves, and the role self-efficacy plays in both. PTSD
may affect self-identity by influencing the way in which an individual appraises his
or her functioning in the past, present and future versus how a person with PTSD
appraises how their peers were functioning across the same time points. To inves-
tigate any discrepancies in temporal self- and social-appraisals associated with
PTSD, researchers Brown et al. (2011) asked combat veterans with and without
PTSD to evaluate their own pre-deployment, present and future functioning and
that of a hypothetical peer. Combat veterans without PTSD reported continu-
ous self-improvement, whereas those subjects with PTSD displayed a positive
bias towards their pre-deployment selves and did not anticipate their functioning
to improve over the next ten years. Although subjects with and without PTSD
believed that the functioning of their hypothetical peers would improve with
time, those subjects with PTSD viewed their hypothetical peer’s improvement
more favorably than their own. These findings indicate that individuals with
PTSD discriminate between their temporal selves and regard their peers’ futures
more favorably than their own.
Similar to the findings of Brown et al. (2011), clinical observations have shown
that when PTSD patients reflect on their past selves, it is from a different and
inferior vantage point. In its most extreme form, the loss of one’s past self is
known as mental death, ‘the loss of the victim’s pre-trauma identity’ (Ebert and
Dyck, 2004, p. 617); where identity is ‘the perception of sameness and continuity
of the self – and the self in relation to others – based on the relative constancy of
one’s assumptions, beliefs, values, attitudes and behavior’ (Drever and Froehlich,
1975; as cited in Ebert and Dyck, 2004, p. 621). To date, theories (e.g. Ebert
and Dyck, 2004) and clinical studies (Ehlers et al., 1998) suggest that mental
death (or defeat) is an important factor underlying PTSD, but it has yet to be
examined experimentally.
Self-efficacy
Although the self is multi-faceted, one aspect of self-identity that is both a risk
factor and outcome in PTSD is low levels of perceived self-efficacy, the percep-
tion of oneself as an agent of change and an active and responsible controller of
one’s own thoughts, emotions and behaviors (e.g. Benight and Bandura, 2004).
For example, damage to a person’s sense of autonomy after having experienced
totalitarian control has predicted the onset of PTSD (Dunmore et al., 1997;
Ehlers et al., 1998; 2000). The very nature of the traumatic experiences may strip
the person of his or her resourcefulness and the resulting PTSD may weaken a
person’s sense of agency, leading to unhealthy coping styles and poorer mental
health outcomes, including more severe presentations of PTSD (Ebert and Dyck,
2004). Positive, active coping involves mental planning and can protect the self
by limiting physical and/or psychological harm during and after a traumatic
experience (Ebert and Dyck, 2004). King et al. (1999) found that those Ameri-
can prisoners of war who utilized active coping techniques during the Vietnam
War received better prognoses post trauma.
How do perceptions of self-efficacy relate to cognitive and affective processes
related to PTSD? Researchers are able to utilize this subjectivity in experiments
by manipulating participants’ feelings of self-efficacy to examine these processes
within a controlled setting (see Litt et al., 1993; Bandura et al., 1969; Bandura
et al., 1985). For example, Brown and colleagues (2012) examined the effects
of induced perceptions of high or low self-efficacy (HSE and LSE, respectively)
on memories of negative experiences. Prior to viewing a video of the aftermath
of a serious car accident, participants were given a false assessment of their ability
to cope. Those individuals induced with HSE were told that he or she met the
criteria for the top 1 percentile of ‘copers’; whereas those participants induced
with LSE were told that they qualified for the lower 50–30 percentile of ‘copers’.
Prior to the experiment, participants did not differ in levels of self-efficacy. After
the induction they were asked to complete measures of perceived self-efficacy and
current mood. Perceptions of self-efficacy corresponded with the induction, but
the induction did not appear to affect mood.
They then watched the video of the serious car accident. After the video,
participants were asked to recall different aspects of the scene. Although, there
was no variation between HSE and LSE subjects’ memory accuracy of periph-
eral details, LSE subjects remembered central traumatic elements with greater
accuracy 24 hours after viewing the film than their HSE counterparts. Brown
and colleagues (2012) argued that this supported evidence suggesting that per-
sons with low self-efficacy are more sensitive to current and potential threats in
their environment. Additionally, the HSE cohort reported fewer negative intru-
sions and distress after watching the film. These results add to the burgeoning
evidence demonstrating the importance self-efficacy in the ability of individuals
to cope with the traumatic outcomes, one of which being intrusive, involuntary
memory retrieval, associated with a wide range of traumatic events, including
war, natural disasters, terrorism and interpersonal violence (Benight and Ban-
dura, 2004).
An individual’s level of self-efficacy has also been shown to correlate with epi-
sodic specificity. In a study using the same paradigm for self-efficacy described
previously, Brown and his colleagues (2013) found that HSE was associated
with greater episodic specificity for both past recollection and future simula-
tions. Moreover, participants with HSE responded with more positive words and
self-efficacious statements. Lastly, HSE correlated with greater success on social
problem solving tasks. This study would suggest that the working self is one way
in which the self mediates a person’s remembrance of the past and imagining of
the future through perceived levels of self-efficacy.
Culture
There is a growing body examining the construction of the self and memory
among individuals with PTSD in different cultural contexts. For instance, Job-
son (2009) proposes in the Threat to the Conceptual Self model that many of the
maladaptive self-views typically associated with negative outcomes to trauma in
Western cultures may not generalize to non-Western contexts. Building on find-
ings showing that the self differs by cultural contexts (e.g. Markus and Kitayama,
1991), Jobson and colleagues suggest that the ways in which the self is affected
by trauma will differ according to the cultural context. For example, in indi-
vidualistic cultures the self is most threatened when trauma affects one’s sense of
control, power or independence; whereas in interdependent cultures trauma will
affect one’s sense of self if the trauma threatens how one relates to one’s com-
munity or sense of group harmony.
Discussion
This chapter aimed to illustrate the interrelations between self-identity and auto-
biographical memory in PTSD. Although self-identity is a core feature of many
theories of PTSD, and is intimately connected to autobiographical memory,
experimental research examining self-identity in relation to PTSD is still rela-
tively new. Based on this review of the extant data, there are a number of exciting
directions for future research. First, it would be useful to explore how people
with PTSD recall and appraise themselves, not just in the present, but in the past
and future as well. For example, individuals with PTSD appear to have difficulty
imagining themselves in the future and, at times, report a foreshortened sense
of the future. Studies could investigate the content and characteristics of these
future scenarios, and how these representations of one’s self in the future func-
tion as a form of context that shapes how a person experiences the present and
recalls the past.
Second, although research has shown how increasing self-efficacy in non-
clinical populations is associated with better coping, these findings need to be
tested with clinical samples. Along these lines, paradigms that manipulate the
degree to which a person experiences ‘perceived permanent change’, ‘trauma
centrality’, and dimensions of independent versus interdependent self-focus will
further clarify the interrelations between the self and processes related to PTSD.
Finally, there is now a growing body of brain imaging research examining the
neural basis of autobiographical memory in PTSD. However, to our knowledge,
neuroimaging studies have yet to directly examine the impact of self-appraisals on
autobiographical memory and other relevant processes in PTSD.
Although the study of autobiographical memory has played a key role in the
current understanding and treatment of PTSD, future studies would benefit from
a greater focus on how current self-views shape these memories. Given the well
established links between self-identity and autobiographical memory, we propose
that research into the self will offer valuable insights in the next generation of
PTSD research.
Note
1 We gratefully acknowledge the support of a Department of Defense grant
(W81XWH- 13-2-0021) awarded to Adam D. Brown.
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3 Contextualizing silence
A psychological approach to
understanding the mnemonic
consequences of selective silence
in social interactions
Charles B. Stone
No one doubts that memories are shaped by the social contexts in which they
are formed and later remembered. The question then becomes, how do particular
social contexts shape the way individuals and groups remember the past? Well, we
do know that the more the social context at retrieval resembles the social context
at encoding, the better the recollection (see Tulving and Thomson, 1973; see
also Surprenant and Neath, 2009). At the same time, when the social contexts
at encoding and retrieval differ, be it by changes in beliefs, mood or environ-
ment, the more the memory is altered – either through omission, commission or
both (see, for example, Bartlett, 1932). But, as the chapters in this book make
clear, social contexts are dynamic and comprise myriad different factors. There-
fore, to truly appreciate the way social contexts shape and reshape memories, it
is incumbent upon memory researchers to delineate the types of social context
and how they shape the way individuals and groups remember the past. To this
end, the goal of the present chapter is to present a psychological perspective on
the mnemonic consequences of selective and complete silence within two levels
of social context. The first level is a social interaction (e.g. a conversation); the
second level, and perhaps more critically, is the relation between the speaker and
listener(s) within the social interaction.
Psychologists, to this day, continue to examine social contexts and how they
shape the way the past is remembered (see, e.g., Godden and Baddeley, 1975;
Pastötter and Bäuml, 2007; Sahakyan and Kelley, 2002; Vaidya et al., 2002). In
much of this research, social context has been used as code for ecological validity,
bringing psychological research out from the lab into the real world. However,
most psychologists, in their attempts to better understand the ecologically valid
contexts in which humans remember, have done so by examining, for example,
what is built (e.g. monuments, Osborne, 2001; Schwartz, 2000), acted (e.g. ritu-
als, Beristain et al., 2000; Connerton, 1989), written (e.g. textbooks, Roediger
et al., 2009; Wertsch, 2002) and overtly recalled (e.g. conversations, Cuc et al.,
2006; Weldon and Bellinger, 1997). In other words, throughout much of the
psychological literature, social context, or at the least the numerous ways it has
been examined, has almost always focused on the overt types of rehearsal within
particular social contexts.
24 Charles B. Stone
Here, however, I will focus on the mnemonic consequences when such overt
rehearsal is lacking, that is, silence within particular social contexts. To do so, I
will examine the mnemonic consequences of silence, what my colleagues and I
have termed mnemonic silence (Stone et al., 2012). I focus my discussion on two
particular types of mnemonic silence, complete silence and selective silence, at
two different levels of social context. At the first level, I will examine mnemonic
silence embedded within the context of social interactions (e.g. conversations). I
will demonstrate how the selective silence within a social interaction has important
and counter-intuitive consequences for how both the speaker and the listener
remember the past (Cuc et al., 2007; Stone et al., 2010; Stone et al., 2013a;
Stone et al., 2012).
At the second level, I will examine how the social relation between the speaker
and listener(s) in these social interactions has important consequences for how
selective silence shapes the way both the speaker and listener remember the past.
One could think of the social relation as a higher order social context relative to
the social context of a social interaction. For my present purposes, I will focus on
social interactions between in-group vs. out-group members and trustworthy vs.
untrustworthy individuals. In doing so, it will lead me to a more important point
about the pertinence of process over structure in understanding how and in what
ways selective silence shapes the way individuals and groups remember the past.
I will begin by first describing in great detail a robust, individual memory
effect: retrieval-induced forgetting. Second, I will demonstrate how this induced
forgetting effect has been extended to social settings and provides important
insights into how selective silence shapes the way individuals and groups remem-
ber the past. Third, I will describe how the context in which this silence occurs has
important consequences for their mnemonic properties by focusing on in-group
vs. out-group members and trustworthy vs. untrustworthy individuals. Fourth,
I will describe pertinent avenues for future research to further understand how
selective silence shapes the content (i.e. which memories are remembered and
forgotten) of what individuals and groups remember about the past. Last, I will
provide some concluding thoughts.
Selective silence and induced forgetting

Individuals in a conversation may remain silent about a past event by not talk-
ing about it at all (complete silence) or by selectively recounting it (selective
silence) – saying some things, while not saying others. Studies of retrieval-
induced forgetting (RIF) capture these two types of silence and suggest that they
have different implications for how individuals and groups remember the past.
In the standard laboratory-based experiment studying RIF (Anderson et al.,
1994; see also Kuhl et al., 2007), participants study and learn category-exemplar
pairs (e.g. fruit-apple, fruit-orange, vegetable-broccoli, vegetable-pea). They then
receive retrieval practice on half of the items from half of the categories. The
experimenter controls what is practiced by providing the participant with the cat-
egory name and the first two letters of, for example, one of the studied exemplars
Contextualizing silence 25
(e.g. Fruit-Ap____). The participant must recall the exemplar. A final recall test
follows, with participants recalling the originally studied exemplars after being
given the category labels.
The selective retrieval in the practice phase of the experiment captures, in a
stripped down way, the two forms of silence I referred to: failing to talk about a
topic at all and failing to talk about aspects of the topic. Specifically, the experi-
mental design creates three types of memories: Rp+, practiced memories (e.g.
Fruit-Apple); Rp–, unpracticed memories related to the practiced memories (e.g.
Fruit-Orange) (selectively left silent), and Nrp, unpracticed memories unrelated
to any practiced memory (e.g. all the vegetables) (left completely silent). If we
think of a category as a ‘topic of discussion’, Rp– items are, in essence, silent
aspects of a selectively remembered topic, whereas Nrp items are classified in this
way because the participants have avoided talking about the topic altogether.
That is, the practice phase captures both complete silence (the Nrp items, e.g.
all the vegetable terms) and selective silence (the Rp– items, e.g. the omission of
Fruit-Orange).
Using this paradigm, psychologists have accrued a large body of evidence that,
on a final recall test, Rp+ items are remembered better than Nrp items, which
in turn are remembered better than Rp– items (in short, Rp+>Nrp>Rp–, Ander-
son et al., 1994; Barnier et al., 2004; Ciranni and Shimamura, 1999; Hicks and
Starns, 2004; Saunders and MacLeod, 2002; Shaw et al., 1995). That is, the rate
of forgetting depends on the relation between what is not said and what is said:
forgetting is worse when the two are related. Although various explanations for
such forgetting have been proposed (see, for example, Dodd et al., 2006), an
inhibitory model through response competition is the most generally accepted
explanation (see Anderson, 2003; Veling and van Knippenberg, 2004; Wimber
et al., 2008).
Critically, this pattern of forgetting as result of selective silence can be found
in situations that approximate everyday remembering; for instance, when the
selective remembering and selective silence is within the context of a free-flowing
conversation (see, e.g., Stone et al., 2013a). Participants are asked to study sto-
ries that have an episode-event structure that parallels the category-exemplar
structure of the material found in Anderson et al. (1994). For example, the story
could contain an episode Going to Coney Island, which, in turn, would consist
of a sequence of events, Rode on roller coaster, Ate a hot dog, Went swimming.
Participants then recount the story to each other. This recounting is inevitably
selective, producing Rp+, Rp–, and Nrp memories. A final memory test assesses
the consequences of this selective practice. Experiments along these lines have
repeatedly found RIF (Cuc et al., 2007; Stone et al., 2010).
More importantly in terms of silence, RIF is found not only when partici-
pants take the role of speaker in a conversation, such as in the experiment just
discussed, but also when they take the role of listener (Cuc et al., 2007). The
former is referred to as within-individual retrieval-induced forgetting (WI-RIF);
the latter as socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting (SS-RIF). The presence of
SS-RIF suggests that the effect of selective silence applies not just to speakers,
26 Charles B. Stone
but also to listeners in a conversation. Hirst and colleagues have argued that
SS-RIF occurs because listeners concurrently, albeit covertly, retrieve with the
speaker (see Hirst and Echterhoff, 2012). With this concurrent, covert retrieval,
the listener is in a situation similar to that of the speaker. SS-RIF (again, induced
forgetting on the part of the listener) differs from the retrieval-induced forgetting
observed in a speaker or an individual remembering on his own in that SS-RIF
is optional. Listeners do not have to concurrently retrieve along with a speaker;
such concurrent retrieval on the part of the listener will depend upon the lis-
tener’s conversational/listening goals, i.e., monitoring for accuracy vs. fluidity
(see Cuc et al., 2007) and, critical for the purposes of this chapter, who they are
listening to. The listener does not necessarily need to retrieve concurrently, and
hence exhibit induced forgetting depending upon the social relation between
the speaker and listener. Recent research suggests (Coman and Graeupner, in
preparation; Koppel et al., 2013) that at least two important social relations may
moderate the instances in which the listener will concurrently retrieve: in-group
membership and trustworthiness.
Social context: in-group membership matters

In-group membership status has a powerful influence on the way social interac-
tions shape the way speakers and listeners remember the past. For instance, in
the saying-is-believing literature, when speakers tune their message to their audi-
ence, this tuned message will only reshape the memory of the speaker when the
listener is an in-group member (e.g. German-German vs. German-Turk) (Ech-
terhoff et al., 2008). Similarly, it appears that the induced forgetting associated
with selective silence is more likely to occur when the speaker and listener belong
to the same in-group.
For example, Barber and Mather (2012) recently found induced forgetting in
both the speaker and the listener only when they were both of the same gender.
In other words, a male speaker did not induce a female speaker to forget related
memories based on what he remained selectively silent about, and vice versa. It is
not exactly clear why gender acted as such a strong in-group membership criterion,
in that a number of other studies have found induced forgetting across mixed-
gender discussants elsewhere (see, for example, Stone et al., 2010). However,
the importance of in-group membership continues to be demonstrated in recent
research as an important moderating variable in terms of induced forgetting.
Coman and colleagues have begun a series of studies examining the boundar-
ies of this in-group effect (Coman and Graeupner, in preparation). In one of
their studies, Coman and Hirst examined the extent to which the induced for-
getting effect might propagate across social mediums (e.g. newspaper, conversa-
tions, etc.). To do so, they had participants study arguments either for or against
euthanasia. They then received selective retrieval practice for the arguments
followed by a conversation with another individual. Coman and Hirst were
interested in whether the induced forgetting, as a result of the initial selective
practice, propagated into the conversation and led to induced forgetting in the
listener. They found that such induced forgetting did propagate, but only when
the listener shared similar attitudes about euthanasia with the speaker. When
their attitudes differed, no induced forgetting propagated to the listener.
Similarly, but at a larger scale, my colleagues and I were interested in whether a
public speech might induce forgetting across a large population and whether this
might be moderated according to social group identification. To test this possibil-
ity, we used Belgium as a case study. Belgium is a country comprised primarily
of two opposing social groups (French-speakers and Dutch-speakers) (see Stone
et al., 2014). We were interested in whether the selective retrieval and silence
on the part of the Belgian king might induce forgetting for those who attended
to the speaker and whether social group identification would moderate any and
all effects, in particular whether the speech led to retrieval-induced forgetting in
the listeners. To this end, we drafted an online questionnaire that, among other
things, asked participants to list six facets of four Belgian-related political issues.
The four issues were: the economic concerns of Belgium, the ‘linguistic’ issue
(Belgium is trilingual, composed primarily of French- and Dutch-speakers with
a small contingent of German-speakers), issues related to Brussels (a bilingual
city: French and Dutch) whose relation to the two linguistically (French and
Dutch) distinct regions of Belgium is contested, and Belgian history (how to
frame the history given the present concerns about the future of Belgium). We
disseminated the questionnaires to both French- and Dutch-speaking Belgians
both before and after the king’s two public speeches. As we anticipated, and is
the norm with all political speeches, the king’s speech was selective. He discussed
economic issues and linguistic issues, but did not discuss issues involving Brussels
or Belgian history, two topics which have been discussed by the king in the past.
We were interested in whether listening to the king’s speech affected accessibil-
ity to information relevant to the four political issues we probed for prior to the
speech. Specifically, did respondents have more difficulty arriving at six facets of
economic and linguistic issues after listening to the speech than they did before
listening to the speech? We divided each item they listed into three categories:
Rp+ for items specifically mentioned by the king; Rp– for items relevant to one
of the two political issues the king did talk about but failed to mention; Nrp
for items relevant to the two issues on our questionnaire that the king did not
talk about. We were interested in comparing the number of Rp– and Nrp items
listed before and after the speech. SS-RIF could be said to occur if Nrp>Rp– was
evident after the speech, assuming that the two were similar prior to the speech.
As evidence that listening to the speech did induce forgetting, we found that
Rp– items were recalled less frequently than Nrp items for French-speakers who
listened to the speech, but not for French-speakers who failed to listen to the
speech. No differences were found between the two samples in the questionnaire
given prior to the speech. As for the Dutch-speakers, we failed to find a similar
pattern. Both before and after the speech, regardless of attendance to the speech,
Rp– items were statistically equivalent to Nrp items.
We suspect the difference between French- and Dutch-speakers reflects their
distinctive social identity and the social identity attributed to the king: The king
28 Charles B. Stone
speaks French at home and his Dutch is less than fluent. The Dutch-speakers may
not have closely attended to the speech and consequently failed to concurrently
retrieve along with the king. Moreover, the Dutch-speakers who attended to the
speech may have been more suspicious and therefore undertook broad search pat-
terns in order to assess the veracity of the king’s words, a retrieval strategy which
often leads to facilitation effects, not induced forgetting (see Chan et al., 2006).
Whatever the reason, these results further underscore the point that in-group and
out-group membership or, at the very least, the perception of in-group and out-
group membership, have important consequences for when selective retrieval and
silence will lead to induced forgetting in the listener.
Social context: trustworthiness matters

An interesting aspect of trustworthiness is that one might assume it to be strongly
associated with in-group membership. That is, people should, all things being
equal, trust their in-group members. Indeed, in-group members are, at the very
least, trusted more than out-group members (Brewer, 1999). Thus, one might
expect similar patterns of remembering and forgetting as a result of selective
silence when embedded within the context of a trusting relationship: greater
induced forgetting when talking to someone trustworthy (possibly an in-group
member) than when talking with an untrustworthy individual (possibly an out-
group member).
To examine this possibility, Koppel and colleagues, in a series of three experi-
ments, tested whether expertise and trustworthiness moderated the extent to
which listeners exhibited induced forgetting (Koppel et al., 2013). Indeed, their
results did support the contention that expertise and trustworthiness moderated
induced forgetting in the listener, but not in the way one might predict based
upon the results of in-group and out-group membership. The more the speaker
was perceived as an expert and trustworthy, the less induced forgetting occurred
in the listener while at the same time increasing the rate of social contagion (i.e.
the social form of implanting a memory)!
Thus, on the one hand, in-group membership increases the probability of
induced forgetting in the listener (Barber and Mather, 2012; Coman and Grae-
upner, in preparation; Stone et al., in prep.). On the other hand, an increase in
trust diminishes the probability of induced forgetting in the listener. The underlin-
ing paradox here is that, all things being equal, individuals presumably trust in-
group members greater than out-group members. Therefore, why do we find these
diverging results? The surface answer may be that in-group membership status adds
an important and necessary layer to trust. In-group members may be motivated to
not merely trust what the speaker says, but to actively create a shared reality with
the speaker (Echterhoff et al., 2008). This motivation leads the listener to con-
currently retrieve along with the speaker. However, humans are cognitive misers
(Kahneman, 2011); if we merely trust someone we may not make the cognitive
effort to concurrently retrieve. Why waste the valuable resources when there’s little
to gain by doing so? However, when presented with an in-group member, someone
we want to create shared reality with, the motivation to concurrently retrieve
with the speaker provides the base for beginning to forge common ground (e.g.
Clark and Schaefer, 1989; Clark and Brennan, 1991) and a shared representa-
tion of the past (see Hirst and Echterhoff, 2012; Stone et al., 2010) which may
ultimately lead to an increase in collective self-esteem. In other words, there’s a
payoff for concurrently retrieving with an in-group member that is lacking if you
simply ‘trust’ the speaker.
A more nuanced answer may be that the social context may merely provide
the potentiation of concurrent retrieval and induced forgetting, but without the
necessary cognitive processes (e.g. retrieval/concurrent retrieval), induced forget-
ting will not occur (see Stone et al., 2013b for a similar argument). I discuss this
further in the following section.
Discussion
In sum, selective silence within the context of social interactions can promote
forgetting in both speaker and listener, but does so in a way that is sensitive both
to what is and what is not said. Silence does not merely permit decay. Rather,
in conjunction with what is said, silence impairs some memories over others.
The result is a gradient of forgetting. Moreover, because remembering – or not
remembering – occurs within social contexts, silence produces both individual
and collective forgetting. The gradient of forgetting is shared across the partici-
pants in a social interaction, be it conversations, text or public speeches. These
social interactions not only shape what the group will remember; it structures
what they will forget. However, I have added some caveats to these results: who
you are listening to matters. Not all selective silence leads to induced forgetting.
Individuals are more likely to exhibit induced forgetting when listening to an
in-group member or someone they do not trust (e.g. an ill-informed individual)
compared to listening to an out-group member or someone they do trust (e.g. a
well-informed individual). More importantly, the research discussed here under-
scores the importance of mnemonic ‘processes’.
Particular contexts may provide the potential for particular mnemonic pro-
cesses to occur (e.g. concurrent retrieval), but if they do not, we would not
expect the predicted mnemonic outcomes (e.g. RIF) (see also Stone et al., 2013).
As Cuc and colleagues (2007) argued in their original study of SS-RIF, listeners
must concurrently retrieve along with the speaker to exhibit induced forgetting.
For example, based upon the results outlined above in terms or in-group mem-
bership, we would expect a friend remaining selectively silent about a previous
event to induce forgetting in each of his friends listening. However, if the friends
are merely monitoring the speaker’s recall for humor (as opposed to accuracy) we
would not necessarily expect induced forgetting: to understand the humor of the
story a listener need not necessarily retrieve concurrently along with the speaker.
Thus, here we have a context in which we would expect induced forgetting to
occur (in-group member) but this is, in fact, unlikely to happen (monitoring goal
does not necessitate concurrent retrieval, i.e. humor). Similarly, using the same
30 Charles B. Stone
example, if you did not trust your friend (e.g. he’s a habitual liar), we may expect
induced forgetting based upon the in-group research outlined above, but the lack
of trust may trump the potential mnemonic processes as a result of the in-group
membership and prevent any concurrent retrieval on the part of the listener. In
other words, the social context may provide the potential for induced forgetting,
but this potential will not be fulfilled without the necessary mnemonic processes
on the part of the listener (i.e. concurrent retrieval).The results of these studies
suggest that to truly understand the mnemonic influences of mnemonic silence
within the context of a social interaction, a nuanced analysis of the social relation-
ships (e.g. in-group social dynamics) in which the social interaction is occurring
needs to be undertaken. By appreciating these social relationships from a psy-
chological perspective, we can begin to better understand and speculate about
how selective silence shapes the way individuals and groups remember the past in
more ecologically valid contexts.
Which memories are forgotten?

I will now turn to instances in which the necessary mnemonic processes on the
part of the listener are undertaken in order to induce forgetting (i.e. concurrent
retrieval), but discuss two areas in need of additional research to better under-
stand which memories will be forgotten. Here I will focus on the importance of
different social groups and individual differences.
Social groups It is important to keep in mind that the mnemonic consequences of

selective silence are nuanced. I have focused here on two contexts, in-group mem-
bership and trustworthiness, to make a point about the importance of process,
but depending on the social context, it is not necessarily a simple matter of ‘this
memory is less accessible or not’ – it is not a zero sum game. Rather it is possible
(and likely) that different memories, as a result of selective silence are more or
less accessible depending upon the social contexts individuals find themselves in.
Indeed, humans are social creatures and, as a result, exist within a web of numerous
social groups (e.g. with one’s spouse, best friend, college friends, colleagues, com-
munity, nation, etc.). What’s ‘forgotten’ in one social group may be remembered
in another, thereby shaping when and with whom induced forgetting occurs. For
example, imagine a high school student who went out to a party last night. In
the morning, his/her mother awakes him/her and proceeds to interrogate him/
her about the party. He/she proceeds to selectively discuss the party with their
mother. Then, after leaving his/her house, they meet up with a friend who was
also at the party. They then proceed to selectively discuss the party. Now, based
upon the audience tuning literature (see Echterhoff et al., 2008), we can safely
assume that these two discussions will be very different. Can we similarly assume
induced forgetting occurred in both instances? While it remains to be examined,
it is safe to assume that induced forgetting would have occurred in both settings
(both discussions occurred between, presumably, in-group members and, given
the nature of discussions, were selective), but the mnemonic consequences of the
selective discussion may lead to different patterns of induced forgetting: what
becomes less accessible as a result of discussing the party with their mom may
become more accessible when discussing the party with their friend. This hypoth-
esized mnemonic differentiation across social groups further underscores the
theme of this chapter: social contexts matter only to the extent that they provide
the potentiation of particular mnemonic processes. Social context, in of itself, does
not necessitate particular mnemonic processes and/or remembrances (but see
Berntsen, 2012, for a discussion of involuntary autobiographical memories). Not
only does the social context shape whether induced forgetting occurs, but also
which memories have the potential to be forgotten.
Individual differences It might seem weird to be emphasizing ‘the individual’

at this point given the emphasis of social context throughout this chapter, but
this is not so much an emphasis on ‘the individual’, but rather an emphasis on the
accumulation of experiences individuals have and how these experiences interact
with the social context in which any given recollection occurs. To illustrate the
importance of experiences on the mnemonic consequences of selective retrieval
and silence in the context of a social interaction, I will use Martin Conway’s
autobiographical memory framework, the Self-Memory System (SMS, Conway,
2005; Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Conway et al., 2004)
The SMS model suggests that the way individuals remember their autobiographi-
cal past is shaped by their previous experiences (autobiographical memory knowledge
base) and their present attitudes and beliefs (working self) or present social context.
A memory may be available (i.e. in the autobiographical memory knowledge base),
but it may not be accessible due to the constraints of the social context at the time
of the recollection. In other words, the working self (the present social context)
regulates current goals and behavior, which shapes how an individual remembers
their autobiographical past, which, in conjunction with the knowledge base, should
have important consequences for both which memories are selectively retrieved in
the course of a social interaction and which memories should be forgotten.
Autobiographical memory knowledge base The autobiographical memory

knowledge base consists of a series of hierarchical levels of representation (from
highest to lowest): lifetime story schema (Conway, 2005; see also Bluck and
Habermas, 2000; 2001), lifetime periods, general event knowledge structures,
and the episodic memory system (Conway et al., 2004; Conway, 2005).
A lifetime story schema consists of a normal understanding of how a life story
unfolds in a particular culture. For example, an important event within the life-
time story schema for modern Americans is their twenty-first birthday. Ameri-
cans, regardless of age, are aware of the cultural importance of this day prior to
and after its occurrence. Lifetime periods, alternatively, are temporally finite. For
example, my time as a post-graduate student or my years living in Edinburgh
would both constitute lifetime periods.
The organization of the general event knowledge structures is less structural than
the prior two levels. That is, general events may be organized temporally – events
32 Charles B. Stone
over the course of weeks, days or even hours – or they may be organized accord-
ing to overlapping themes. For example, I may organize the completion of my
last thesis chapter, finishing the markings for my tutorials, and putting the finish-
ing touches on my post-doc research proposal according to the time I completed
them, for example, the fourth week of September 2010. Alternatively, I may
organize them thematically, for example, according to thesis progression, teach-
ing responsibilities, and future employment, respectively.
Within the episodic memory system, ‘experience-near event specific sensory-
perceptual-cognitive-affective details’ (Conway et al., 2004, p. 496) are preserved,
or, in other words, they become the building blocks of a memory. These are the
details impinging upon our senses day in and day out, providing the basis for
vivid recollections of past events.
Importantly, Conway and colleagues argue that the working self and autobio-
graphical memory knowledge base work together to retrieve an autobiographical
memory. However, the influence is bidirectional. That is, the autobiographical
memory knowledge base will constrain what the self is while the working self
shapes which memories are accessible based upon the goals, beliefs, and social
context of the rememberer at any particular place and time. The importance of
this model for when induced forgetting will be found in either the speaker or a
listener as a consequence of selective retrieval and silence is two-fold: the hier-
archical nature of autobiographical recollection and the moderating influence of
the present, working self. I will examine each in turn.
The hierarchical nature of Conway and colleagues’ structure of autobiographi-
cal recollection provides some basic hypotheses about when selectively remem-
bering your autobiographical past will induce particular memories to be forgotten
as result of selective silence. For example, one would expect the retrieval of a
memory from one lifetime period to induce greater forgetting of a memory from
the same lifetime period than from a different lifetime period. Furthermore, one
would predict the retrieval of a memory from a general event to induce greater
forgetting of a memory from that general event than to a memory retrieved
from the same lifetime period, but different general events. Yet, here is where it
becomes more complicated. How are general events organized? I already men-
tioned how the SMS framework suggests they can be organized temporally or
thematically. This lack of predictability may moderate or even eliminate experi-
mental induced forgetting effects. For example, if an RIF experimenter instructs
participants to elicit autobiographical memories organized temporally but the
participant tends to organize their autobiographical memories thematically, this
may confound the results. Importantly, evidence suggests that it is at the general
event level that individuals usually commence their retrieval search (Haque and
Conway, 2001). Thus, understanding how individuals organize their personal
past at this juncture of retrieval is of the utmost importance to understanding
when any given remembrance in the course of a social interaction induces forget-
ting of any particular memory.
Perhaps more critically for researchers interested in RIF and SS-RIF, and selec-
tive silence in the course of a social interaction, is the influence of the working self.
As outlined above, the working self is the gatekeeper for access to and retrieval of
certain memories. As Conway et al. (2004) stated: ‘control processes in the work-
ing self shift from inhibition of autobiographical memories (which might distract
attention from the current goal active) to instantiation of a retrieval mode that
prompts a search through the long-term self’ (p. 495). In other words, depend-
ing upon the goals of the working self, memories may be retrieved and/or inhib-
ited. Incidentally, Conway and colleagues argued that such goal processes are
largely unconscious; a similar argument is made for the mechanisms driving RIF
(see Anderson and Spellman, 1995; Conway and Fthenaki, 2003). Thus, despite
how individuals may ‘organize’ their autobiographical past, how that categoriza-
tion is actualized will depend upon the current goals of the individual, which may
easily shift as the individuals’ social context shifts.
Conway and colleagues’ SMS model of autobiographical memory provides
a framework through which one may make predictions about which memories
from an individual’s past will compete for retrieval when selectively remember-
ing their past. This model also acknowledges the role of individual differences
depending upon the working self and the social context when individuals are
remembering the past. This suggests that understanding which memories will
be impaired when selectively remembering may not be as simple as compar-
ing an individual’s recall with the hierarchical structure of the autobiographi-
cal knowledge base as outlined in the SMS model. Rather, the access to the
autobiographical knowledge base will fluctuate and change depending upon
an individual’s working self and their current social context. Thus, if and when
selective silence shapes the way individuals remember/forget and discuss their
autobiographical past, how this forgetting ultimately unfolds will be highly
individualized.
Concluding thoughts
While overt rehearsals within any given social context may have important con-
sequences for how individuals and groups remember the past, the goal of the
present chapter was to provide a psychological perspective on the importance and
dynamism of selective silence in how individuals and groups remember the past.
Remaining selectively silent about the past will induce greater forgetting relative
to remaining completely silent. However, within some social contexts this gradi-
ent of forgetting might be greater; in other social contexts, this gradient of for-
getting might be lesser. Social contexts merely provide the potentiation for each
gradient, but the slope of each will be dependent upon the speaker and listener(s)
undertaking the necessary and sufficient mnemonic processes (i.e., concurrent
retrieval). Furthermore, even when these mnemonic processes do occur, the par-
ticular types of memories that will be forgotten as a consequence of selective
silence will depend not only on the social context, but also on the idiosyncratic
ways in which individuals organize and retrieve their autobiographical memories.
As should be clear by now, the extent to which social contexts shape the way
individuals and groups remember the past is varied and nuanced. However, as
34 Charles B. Stone
psychologists, and social scientists alike, continue to examine how social con-
texts shape the way the past is remembered, one thing becomes clear: a holistic
picture of how individuals and groups remember the past will only be achieved
by including an appreciation of the mnemonic consequences of silence from a
psychological perspective.
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4 Emotional context, rehearsal
and memories
The mutual contributions
and possible integration of
flashbulb memory and eyewitness
identification research
Rafaele Dumas and Olivier Luminet
In some circumstances, people remember the specifics of the context in which

they first heard a piece of news, such as the exact time it happened, their detailed
location or the activities they were doing at the time. These detailed memo-
ries of the reception context are called flashbulb memories (FBMs; Brown and
Kulik, 1977). For instance, after the terrorist attacks that occurred in the US on
11 September 2001, more than 95 percent of Americans and non-Americans
remembered the details of the context they were in when learning about the
attack, such as who informed them, where they were when hearing the news,
their ongoing activity and the changes in their activity afterwards (Luminet et al.,
2004). Models explaining the formation of FBMs also consider the memory of
the event, which includes all the information related to what happened when the
event occurred.
In the circumstances of a criminal investigation, eyewitnesses are asked to recall
in great detail the crime scene they witnessed. Connections between the fields
of FBM and witlessness’s event memory have been suggested. For example, the
astonishing results of Yuille and Cutshall’s field study of eyewitness testimony
(1986) have been interpreted as a case of FBM. The authors analyzed the inter-
views of thirteen eyewitnesses of an actual gun-shooting incident soon after the
event and five months later. The witnesses’ reports were particularly accurate
and consistent in their accounts of the crime scene, with no impact of misleading
information or of stress experienced during the event. These results substan-
tially differed from the results usually obtained in the eyewitness field showing
a low level of witnesses’ testimony accuracy. The results of Yuille and Cutshall’s
study have been considered as a particular case of eyewitness testimony, espe-
cially in terms of the description of the perpetrator of the crime, because of the
salience and uniqueness of the event (Meissner et al., 2007). Thus, these results
suggest that, in some circumstances, we can refer to FBM models to describe
mnemonic processes involved in an eyewitness’s testimony of the criminal event.
However, to the best of our knowledge, no systematic literature review has been
carried out to examine how the two research fields can enrich each other. In this
38 Rafaele Dumas and Olivier Luminet
chapter, we examine whether FBM models may help elucidate mnemonic pro-
cesses involved when remembering a perpetrator’s face. In cases where eyewit-
nesses see the perpetrator, an identification procedure takes place after a suspect is
arrested. Eyewitnesses are confronted with a row of persons, among whom they
have to identify the individual they saw committing the crime. Because of its judi-
cial importance (erroneous eyewitness identification is involved in 75 percent of
overturned DNA cases examined in the US – www.innocentproject.org), there is
an extensive literature on the psychological processes involved in eyewitness iden-
tification. The need for theoretical frameworks in the field has been advocated
(Brewer et al., 2007). Suggestions have been made to describe the processes
involved during the identification procedure, that is, when eyewitnesses choose a
target in the line-up as the person whom they saw committing the crime (Brewer
et al., 2007; see also Charman and Wells, 2007). In this chapter, we will examine
memory processes involved during the time period from the moment witnesses
see the perpetrator until the recall of the perpetrator’s face (i.e. identification).
We will examine how models developed in the FBM field may provide a valuable
framework in order to better understand the mnemonic processes involved when
eyewitnesses recollect a crime scene.
The aim of this chapter is to emphasize that the two fields of research would
greatly benefit from an empirical and theoretical integration. More specifically,
we want to show how the eyewitness identification field could benefit from mod-
els developed in the literature of FBM and how FBM research may benefit from
eyewitness identification research.
We will first describe the two research fields in terms of the type of events
studied, aims and methods. Then, we will detail three major components of one
model explaining flashbulb memory formation (the “emotional integrative”
model).
As illustrations, we will use the fictitious experiences of Marc and Denis:
Box 4.1 Marc’s FBM experience: the death of M. Jackson

My name is Marc. I am working in my office quietly, highly involved with
handling some difficult issues related to an important invoice for our main
customer. I am in a good mood today, already imagining the nice evening I
will spend with members of the Michael Jackson fan club. Michael Jackson
has been my idol since I was a kid. I bought all his records and had the
chance to attend one of his concerts. I also bought different books about
him, and I know all the major events of his life.
But now it is time to go to the sales department’s weekly meeting, which
takes place in the building next to my office. Since it is a new building that
I don’t know well, I make sure to leave my office early so that I will arrive
on time. Fortunately, I remember the way to go there, and I am the first
one in the meeting room.
Emotional context, rehearsal and memories 39
But what is happening outside? Why are people so loud today? The
atmosphere at work is usually is very quiet. Suddenly, someone runs into
the meeting room. It is the sales department manager. Today, he is wear-
ing a light grey suit, with a classic striped shirt and a red silk tie. He looks
very agitated, running to me with an anxious expression. He could say
only one word: ‘Michael.’ Michael, which Michael are you talking about?
I ask, Michael Stewart, the new colleague who started one month ago, or
Michael Brandington, our delegate for Asia?
Michael Jackson is dead! What? My Michael Jackson has passed away?
This is just not possible! I can’t believe this. What a disaster! But after a few
seconds of disbelief, I have to admit that this seems to be true. The news is
already on all the channels when I open my laptop. This is too overwhelm-
ing for me. However, I need to stay focused on this meeting, as there are
issues in which I am highly involved and I can’t miss it.
The meeting finally ends after two hours. It was very difficult for me
to stay attentive, but I think I managed to remain focused. But now that
the meeting is over, I need to call my friends. How have they reacted
to this terrible news? We need to organize something in memory of
Michael when we meet tonight. But first, I want to read exactly what
happened. Was it an accident? Was he ill? Or was he shot by someone?
While I am reading reports on the Internet, my mind is full of images
of his last concert. Now that I know enough about what happened, I
need to call my best friends. Work can wait when something so excep-
tional happens. At the meeting that evening, everybody comes with
some additional information about how exactly it happened, what the
doctor said, how the family reacted. Most of my friends also talked
about all kinds of strong feelings they are experiencing. The whole story
is becoming clearer, although I am still in such an emotional state that
I can’t really participate in the discussions. My mind is full of thoughts
of my strong bond with Michael Jackson. I notice that some people
also mention what they were doing when they heard the news or whom
they were with.
Box 4.2 Denis’s crime eyewitness experience: the coffee

shop robber
I enjoy my daily 20 minutes’ walk of commute from home to my office
building. Even on this cold and wet morning, this stroll prepares me
for my workday. I usually go over the schedule of the coming day in
my mind: meetings, talking with Sally from the marketing depart-
ment, reports to wrap up. The day is slowly getting brighter. Lost in my
thoughts, I approach the coffee shop where I get my necessary double
espresso to start the day. I am about to grab the door handle when the
door swings so hard against my body that I have to step back to avoid
getting smacked in the face. Surprised, I am about to comment on the
rudeness of the hurrying customer, when I look up and see a man rush-
ing out of the coffee shop. His facial expression is nervous, and his eyes
are anxious. His gestures are fast and tense. As I see the gun in his hand,
I suddenly freeze in fear. I was suddenly in a movie scene! When I raise
my eyes to his face again, the man is already speeding away in a car that
was parked in front of the store. I rush into the coffee shop, disoriented
and still trying to make sense of what happened. I see the owner on the
floor unconscious, with a small pool of blood around his head and the
cash register open: the situation is getting clearer in my mind. While I
nervously dial the emergency number to call an ambulance, I replay in
my mind what happened from the moment I approached the coffee shop
to the moment I discovered the owner on the floor. I try to remember
what the man’s face looked like – dark hair and eyes, thin mouth, did he
have a scar on the cheek? – and the make of his car. While I’m waiting for
the ambulance and the police to arrive, other customers turn up and are
shocked about the situation of the coffee shop owner. I explain to them
what happened. They tell me about the increasing frequency of criminal-
ity, remembering stories from the TV news or from friends. Finally, we
hear the ambulance’s siren, followed by the police. The police officers ask
me to tell them what I saw and to give a description of the robber. I hear
one person reporting to another police officer that he saw a man with
black hair and a beard. In a second thought, I think that he had a beard
and a scar on the right cheek. The afternoon of this same day, I go to the
police station, where they record my statement of what happened and
my description of the robber, and show me pictures of suspects who have
committed similar crimes. I do not recognize my bearded and scarred
robber. That night, after talking to friends and family relatives, I watch
the local news but nothing is mentioned about the coffee shop robbery,
either on the TV or in the newspaper the next day. Everything is about
this downtown bank robbery with pictures of the two young robbers who
look like characters from a TV movie. By the way, one of them is bearded.
Two weeks later, the police call me again to identify the robber during an
identification line-up procedure.
Two research fields

This first section of this chapter will consider FBM research and then eyewitness
identification research according to four aspects: (1) the definition of the type of
event under the scope of each field, (2) the main research aims, (3) the type of
method traditionally used, and (4) the importance given to memory accuracy.
The FBM research field
Event
Events examined in FBM research studies concern a large group of people who
generally did not directly witness the event. These events are so surprising and/or
important for this group of people that they command their attention sufficiently
to disrupt their everyday life. These people then feel a need to share the news and
the experience of learning about the event. A typical event that leads to FBM is,
for instance, the death of M. Jackson as experienced by Marc in our example. It
involves events that hold a certain level of importance, which can reach an inter-
national significance (e.g. the 9/11 terrorist attack, the World Cup tournament).
Because of the importance of these events, they are usually reported heavily in
the media.
Aim
In FBM research, the goal is to understand why people report many vivid details
of the context in which they hear an event with a high level of confidence, and
often produce consistent renderings when describing such context reception.
Recent models also insist on the close association between FBMs and event
memory, i.e. what happened when the event occurred. Based on field observa-
tions, different models have been tested to articulate the different variables (e.g.
importance of the event) involved in the formation of FBMs. Beside the struc-
tural dynamic of the variables involved in order to predict consistency, vividness,
and/or confidence in contextual memories, recent studies have also examined
the psychosocial functions that can be fulfilled by FBMs (Demiray and Luminet,
2015). In that study, the researchers investigated how the three major psychoso-
cial functions of autobiographical remembering (self-continuity, social bonding,
and directedness; Bluck et al., 2005) are activated when people have FBMs.
Method
In FBM studies, the data are observational, usually collected after public, unex-
pected, emotional and important events that affect a large group of people. The
most common method used is a survey/questionnaire. The research attempts to
have the participant complete the survey/questionnaire as soon as possible after
the event in question and usually has one or more follow-ups several months or
years later.
Memory accuracy
When researchers examine FBMs, it is not possible to measure the accuracy of
the information, as there is no objective way to assess FBMs given their subjec-
tive nature. Therefore, researchers most often use consistency as the best proxy
for accuracy. Consistency is measured using a set of ‘canonical’ variables (e.g.,
time, location, ongoing activities, other people present) at two or more times
of measurement. Another key characteristic of FBMs is the number of vivid
details provided. As a very large proportion of respondents are usually able to
remember the canonical variables, Finkenauer et al. (1998) introduced addi-
tional questions assessing the specific details that people could remember related
to perceptual information. These questions include visual, auditory, or olfactory
details. Finally, the level of confidence associated with FBMs has also often been
examined. In each case, the goal is to find different ways of examining accuracy
for the contextual memory. An important future step will be to systematically
examine these three measures together in order to better study memory accu-
racy. Current research suggests, for instance, that there is a moderate, positive
relation between consistency and confidence of FBMs. A closer examination
indicates that this relation varies widely, from studies finding strong (Schmolck
et al., 2000; Weaver, 1993) to moderate associations (Kvavilashvili et al., 2009;
Winningham et al., 2000), with some studies also reporting non-significant
associations (Neisser and Harsch, 1992; Talarico and Rubin, 2003, Talarico and
Moore, 2012). We can thus conclude from these findings that although higher
confidence, in most instances, helps in strengthening consistency, the often
modest magnitude of the relation suggests that confidence cannot be taken as a
pure proxy for consistency.
One explanation for the variability in the relation between confidence and
consistency might be that these two aspects of FBMs are sensitive to different
predictors. First, the degree of people’s attachment with the target event activates
FBM confidence but not FBM consistency measured after 18 months (Day and
Ross, 2014). Attachment refers to the degree of positive or negative attitudes
one holds about the event or the situation eliciting the FBM. If we go back to
our initial example, the very strong attachment and the positive attitudes of Marc
toward Michael Jackson should make him very confident about his memories
of the news (e.g. ‘That was just before an important meeting. It was the sales
department manager who gave me the bad news’). However, Marc will probably
not recall after few months that the department manager wore a striped shirt and
a red silk tie. He will most likely mix up the manager’s different types of shirts
and ties because he sees him almost every day.
Second, rehearsal has been found to be strongly associated with confidence
in FBM (r = .60) but unrelated to FBM consistency (r = .10) (Day and Ross,
2014). Again, if we go back to our example, the fact that Marc was highly sur-
prised, highly emotional, and highly attached to Michael Jackson made him fre-
quently rehearse the event, as intensity of emotions is one of the main triggers for
overt (i.e. social communication, following the media) and covert (i.e. thoughts)
rehearsal (see Luminet et al., 2000a; Luminet et al., 2000b). But this very high
rate of rehearsal in the following days and weeks will only enhance his belief
that his FBMs are correct, while the information reported will correspond only
loosely to what he reported at the time the event happened, that is, he will exhibit
poor memory consistency.
The eyewitness identification research field
Event
Events under the scope of eyewitness identification research are the commission
of criminal activities and, more specifically in this context, the face of the crime’s
perpetrator. Thus, the eyewitness, as opposed to most FBM research, actually
saw the event. Usually, one or few persons witness a crime. Witnessing a crime is
highly unexpected, arouses intense negative emotions and disrupts everyday life
(e.g., Denis is ‘surprised, disoriented’, he ‘suddenly freezes in fear’ and later ‘ner-
vously dials the emergency number’). The nature of the media coverage depends
on the crime: not every crime is covered, or covered to the same extent. For
instance, Denis notices that the crime he witnessed is not reported in the next
day’s news whereas the downtown bank robbery is widely covered, with pictures
of the two robbers.
Aim
The goals of eyewitness research are driven by applied questions in the context
of police investigation and courtroom judgment. Eyewitness identification is a
regular type of evidence collected during police investigations. Furthermore, eye-
witness testimonies have a strong impact on jurors’ judgment, especially if the
witness expresses a high degree of confidence in his/her testimony (e.g. Leippe
and Eisenstadt, 2009). However, as mentioned in this chapter’s introduction,
eyewitness misidentification is one of the greatest causes of wrongful convic-
tion. Given this central role of eyewitness testimony in police investigations and
judicial judgment, the goal of the research field is to define the psychological
processes involved in criminal identification and the factors that can help assess
and increase its accuracy. Ultimately, eyewitness research aims to improve police
investigation techniques and better inform jurors and judges in order to reduce
(if not eliminate) identification errors and wrongful convictions.
Method
Most of the research examining eyewitness identification is set within a labora-
tory context. The typical experimental scenario consists in showing participants
a staged video or live criminal event. Then, after a delay (retention interval),
participants are asked to recognize the criminal in a line-up of individuals (six on
average). The line-up either does or does not include the criminal (target present
vs. absent line-up) to simulate the two actual police situations (i.e. the suspect
is the guilty perpetrator or an innocent person). The other members of the line-
up are fillers who are innocent. To be more ecologically valid, mock witnesses
are not told beforehand that they will have to identify the culprit, in order to
avoid orienting their attention to the criminal when witnessing the mock criminal
event. The advantage of the experimental method is that it allows researchers to
observe the identification accuracy under different contexts. They can control for
variables that might affect the eyewitness’s ability to identify the perpetrator (e.g.
quality of exposure, retention interval, instructions). In addition to the identifica-
tion of the perpetrator, the other common measure is the mock witnesses’ confi-
dence in their identification. Two other methods used in eyewitness research are
based on actual cases (Wells and Penrod, 2011): first, archival research based on
past data collected in police and prosecutors’ investigation files; and second, field
experiments using experimental methods in the context of actual cases. These
methods have been used in only a handful of studies (Wells and Penrod, 2011;
Lampinen et al., 2012). Field studies are a way to test the generalizability of lab
experiments’ results. Overall, the results obtained with both field and experi-
mental methods have been consistent. However, beyond the methodological
challenges associated with archival and field studies (i.e., compound variables,
information unsystematically reported in the police files), the main issue in a real
police investigation is the estimation of the eyewitness’s accuracy in identifying
the suspect. Since the actual crime perpetrator is unknown, the identification of
the suspect can be either a mistaken identification (identification of an innocent
suspect) or a correct identification (identification of the actual perpetrator).
Memory accuracy
As mentioned above, in the actual context of an investigation, the police do
not know whether the eyewitness accurately identifies the actual perpetrator of
the crime or picks out an innocent suspect. Thus, in the lab context of eyewit-
ness identification, the central question is to determine the conditions under
which an eyewitness makes a(n) (un)reliable identification. Three types of vari-
ables are typically studied to estimate the accuracy of an eyewitness’s identifica-
tion (Wells, 1978). First, estimator variables refer to the characteristics of the
witnessing context that can affect the witness’s accuracy. These variables are not
under the control of the police. They consist of the characteristics of the witness-
ing situation (e.g. exposure duration, illumination), the witness’s characteristics
(e.g. personality, age, disability, intoxication), their emotional arousal (e.g. stress,
crime seriousness), and the perpetrator’s characteristics (e.g. race, gender, age).
Second, system variables refer to the factors that are under the control of the
police investigation from the very first contact the police have with the witness.
They consist of the methods used to collect the witness’s testimony before iden-
tification (e.g. presentation of mugshots, facial composite systems, type of inter-
view) and to administer the identification procedure (e.g. line-up composition
and presentation, instructions given to the witness). These variables can be seen
as methodological rules for collecting data that are as unbiased as possible. Esti-
mator and system variables are antecedent causes of the witness’s identification
accuracy. A third class of variables is used as indicators to ‘postdict’ (i.e. evaluate)
the eyewitness’s accuracy. These ‘indicia of reliability’ are used in combination
with estimator and system variables to estimate the extent to which the witness’s
identification can be trusted (Lampinen et al., 2012). The indicia of reliabil-
ity include the three variables used as proxies for FBM accuracy: confidence,
vividness (i.e. amount of details in the perpetrator description), and consistency.
Overall, results do not support the common belief that a confident and consistent
eyewitness who reports many details is also an accurate one (e.g. Bell and Loftus,
1989; Brewer and Burke, 2002; Brewer and Wells, 2006; Sporer et al., 1995).
The confidence–accuracy relation depends on witnessing conditions and sys-
tem variables, such as the feedback about the correctness of the identification
(Deffenbacher, 1980). Furthermore, both variables do not depend on the same
factors (Leippe, 1980). For instance, accuracy is predicted by crime seriousness or
the duration of the event, without affecting confidence. Confidence is predicted
by the eyewitnesses’ evaluation of their own memory strength or the line-up
administrator feedback without affecting accuracy. If Denis had poor witness-
ing conditions (e.g. short exposure duration, fast pace of events, threatening
context), the confidence–accuracy relation would be weak. If the police officer
who administers the line-up tells him that he did a good job after the identifica-
tion, Denis may feel that he indeed has a good memory of the perpetrator’s face
regardless the actual accuracy of his identification. Thus, the confidence–accuracy
relation would be weak.
Regarding the consistency–accuracy relation, both lab studies and field studies
have shown that consistent witnesses are not necessarily accurate (Deffenbacher
et al., 2006; Godfrey and Clark, 2010; Steblay et al., 2013). The main issue is that
false, initial line-up identifications are often carried over to subsequent identifica-
tion line-ups. In Steblay et al.’s study (2013), the first line-up identification error
‘was almost six times more likely to be carried forward as an error than as a correc-
tion’ (p. 651) at the second line-up identification. Several psychological processes
can account for this phenomenon: memory confusion between the perpetrator
and the suspect presented in the mugshot or the first line-up, the witness’s motiva-
tion to be consistent, or a repetition of the presence of the suspect in both line-ups
could be a suggestive signal. In a field study including 1,039 real line-up proce-
dures, Horry et al. (2012) observed that ‘witnesses who requested at least one
additional viewing of the lineup were two and a half times more likely to identify
fillers than witnesses who did not request any additional lineup viewings’ (p. 264).
Finally, the vividness–accuracy relationship is studied through the witness’s
prior description of the perpetrator’s appearance and of the crime itself. Meissner
et al.’s meta-analysis (2008) shows no significant relation between the quan-
tity of information reported in the description of the perpetrator and identifica-
tion accuracy (r = −.04). Furthermore, the association between the perpetrator
description accuracy and recognition accuracy is low (r = .14). This association is
lower for field experiments (vs. laboratory experiments) and in studies using lon-
ger delay between the description and the recognition. One explanation is that
person description and face recognition result from different cognitive processes.
Person description leads an individual to focus on particular features of the face,
whereas face recognition depends on more holistic, configural processing (Meiss-
ner et al., 2007).
Despite different aims and methods (Marsh, 2007), what becomes clear from
these descriptions is a number of particular similarities across the fields of FBM
and eyewitness identification. First, both want to describe fundamental memory
processes to understand memory experiences anchored in actual life. Second,
both study events difficult to reproduce in a lab environment. The difficulty is
trying to create an experience highly emotional and credible enough to repro-
duce the reality of a natural event and within the boundaries of ethical rules. Each
field deals with this difficulty with a research method in accordance with their top
priority. The actual experience of learning about an event is central for FBM stud-
ies, which implies favoring an observational research method. For the eyewitness
identification field, determining the conditions of memory accuracy is essential,
which necessitates an experimental research method. Finally, the FBM formation
context is a particular case of the eyewitness context: a criminal situation signifi-
cant enough for a community and witnessed by a group of persons as in the Yuille
and Cutshall study. Also, the events across these fields of research share many
similarities within the subjective context in which they occur (i.e. unexpected in
the course of daily life and surprising) and the emotional context they trigger (i.e.
intense emotional arousal). These contextual similarities suggest that a model
relevant to the formation of FBMs may also enlighten the mnemonic processes
of individuals who witnessed a crime.
The role of the emotional context

The emotional-integrative model of Finkenauer et al. (1998) is the model that
has received the strongest empirical support (e.g. Luminet, 2009; Luminet and
Curci, 2009). The model emphasizes the central role of the initial emotional
responses when hearing the news. After a description of the model, we will dis-
cuss the role of emotion in the context of eyewitnesses to a crime.
Flashbulb memory: the emotional-integrative model

(Finkenauer et al., 1998)
With regards to antecedent variables, the model suggests that FBMs are often
formed after highly unexpected events, which then elicit a very strong reac-
tion of surprise (see Figure 4.1). While day-to-day activities are not usually well
remembered, the strong emotions that often accompany a break with the daily
routine help cement the event in memory. Surprise is not a valenced emotional
state, but the degree of (un)pleasantness is very quickly appraised after novelty
is detected. In Marc’s experience of M. Jackson’s death, after an initial and brief
disbelief (e.g., ‘Michael Jackson is dead! This is just not possible! I can’t believe
it!’), strong negative feelings are quickly activated (e.g., ‘My Michael Jackson has
passed away? What a disaster! This is too overwhelming for me’; e.g., Frijda,
1986; Lazarus, 1982; Leventhal, 1984; Scherer, 1984). These negative emotions
do not occur in a vacuum. The surrounding context is essential to understand
Marc’s reactions. He was deeply affected by the news because Michael Jackson is
an important figure for him: he loves his songs, which have been part of his life
since he was a kid and his current leisure activities are deeply connected with
M. Jackson’s universe (e.g. being member of a fan club with whom he meets
regularly). In other words, he knows many aspects of Michael Jackson’s life, and
he knows them because he is strongly attached to him.
If an event is perceived as important by an individual (Lazarus, 1991), if it
challenges coping abilities, or questions personal standards and values (Leven-
thal and Scherer, 1987), it will shape emotional reactions. An event involving
strong emotional reactions is then quickly followed by active rehearsal pro-
cesses as well in the form of an urge to chat with others (Rimé et al., 1998) and
of internal recurrent thoughts, or ruminations (e.g. Martin and Tesser, 1989).
Marc feels the need to call his best friends: ‘Work can wait when something so
exceptional happens. At the meeting that evening, everybody comes with some
additional information about how exactly it happened [. . .] My mind is full
of thoughts of my strong bond with Michael Jackson.’ Additionally, when the
event is related to a public figure or (inter)nationally relevant news, rehearsal
also often occurs via the media (‘The news is already on all channels when I
open my laptop’). Rumination is often described as covert rehearsal, in con-
trast with overt rehearsal, which includes talking with others and following the
media.
Finkenauer et al.’s model suggests that the extent of rehearsal is related to the
accuracy of the event memory (i.e. people’s memory of the target event, here in
the example all the information people know about the death of M. Jackson).
The degree of accuracy in event memory, in turn, predicts the degree of elabora-
tion of FBMs, which is operationalized as consistency when two measurements
are assessed over time, or confidence or vividness at any given point in time
(Luminet, 2009; Luminet and Curci, 2009).
The emotional context of the crime eyewitness

The first step in our attempt to draw associations between Finkenauer et al.’s
model and the experience of crime eyewitnesses is to examine the relation
between the emotional arousal triggered by witnessing a crime and memory of
the perpetrator’s face.
The emotional context of witnessing a crime is an estimator variable (i.e. that
the police cannot control), which has been examined in terms of stress arousal.
The relation between stress and eyewitness identification accuracy can be illus-
trated as an inverted U-function (or Yerkes-Dodson law, 1908), indicating the
best accuracy at a moderate level of stress (meta-analysis; Deffenbacher et al.,
2004). According to a phenomenon of attentional tunneling (Easterbrook,
1959), a high level of stress narrows the witness’s attention to a small number of
details. Thus, a high level of stress results in a partial encoding of the crime scene
according to the attentional focus. For example, witnesses focus their attention
along two different dimensions: (1) either the external characteristics of the event
or their own internal experience, and (2) the central characteristics or peripheral
characteristics of the event (i.e. connected vs. unconnected with the source of the
emotional arousal, Christianson, 1992).
If we turn to the antecedents of the emotional arousal, Finkenauer et al.’s
model emphasizes the importance of three characteristics of the event: the
novelty/surprise of the event, the importance of the event and attitude toward/
knowledge of the event. Few studies have examined these variables in the con-
text of eyewitness identification. Novelty and surprise have been studied as
causes of the ‘weapon focus effect’. According to this effect, the presence of a
weapon in a crime scene captures the witness’s attention and thus results in low
identification accuracy. Steblay’s meta-analysis (1992) shows a small effect size
of .13 (19 studies) for identifications and an effect size of .55 for perpetrator
descriptions. These results are in line with results obtained from field stud-
ies (observed in 1 out of 4 studies; Lampinen et al., 2012). The two causes
of the weapon focus effect mentioned in the literature are (1) the threat that
a weapon represents/the emotional arousal that it triggers, and (2) the nov-
elty represented by the presence of a weapon as an unusual object. Experi-
ments compared the presence of a gun with the presence of unexpected objects,
such as celery (Mitchell et al., 1998), a chicken (Pickel, 1998), or a feather
duster (Hope and Wright, 2007). Results do not provide a clear answer to
whether threat or novelty is the cause of the weapon focus effect. Finkenauer
et al.’s model suggests examining novelty as an antecedent of the threat rather
than examining them as two mutually exclusive variables. Both the sight of a
weapon and celery are novel events, which in turn arouse surprise. However,
the weapon is quickly appraised as a threat (e.g., ‘As I see the gun in his hand,
I suddenly freeze in fear’) whereas the celery would be appraised as funny or
weird or simply go unnoticed. The unvalenced state of surprise affects different
types of emotional arousal according to particular contexts. Regardless their
type, emotions, if strong enough, can trigger an active process of rehearsal.
However, since the different emotions orient the eyewitness’s attentional focus
towards different characteristics, the type of information rehearsed might differ
according to the type of emotion aroused.
The importance of the event has been examined in terms of seriousness of
the crime. When the crime is more serious, eyewitnesses are more accurate in
their perpetrator identification because they give more attention to the event
(Leippe et al., 1978). Leippe et al. (1978) observed that mock witnesses were
more accurate in identifying a robber when they learned before witnessing the
crime (vs. after) that the object stolen was expensive (vs. inexpensive). The
seriousness of the crime also depends on the witness’s status (i.e. victim vs.
bystander) and the attitude to and knowledge about criminality. Regarding
the witness’s status in the crime scene, globally, victims are less accurate than
bystanders because of the stress arousal difference (Hosch et al., 1984; Kassin,
1984). Attitudes to and knowledge about criminality and on the severity of the
crime witnessed moderates the magnitude of the emotional arousal. Denis felt
like he was in a movie. He might have been less impressed by the event if he
regularly came in contact with criminality because he was a police officer or he
Figure 4.1 Model of Flashbulb Memory and Event Memory Formation from
Finkenauer et al. (1998). Plain arrows: Paths predicted by Finkenauer et al. (1998)
and found significant. Dashed Arrows: New paths not predicted by Finkenauer et al.
(1998) but found significant by Luminet et al. (2009).
was himself involved in criminal activities (though this does not imply that he
will have a more accurate memory of the event or the perpetrator; Christianson
et al., 1998; Lindsay et al., 2000).
Further studies on the antecedent of the emotional arousal may help to refine
the definition of stress arousal by considering different types of emotional states
(e.g. fear, anger, threat). Beyond allowing for a more precise evaluation of the
stress arousal, it may help to understand whether different emotions are associ-
ated with a particular attentional focus. This would have consequences on the
amount and type of information rehearsed and remembered.
The role of rehearsal
The role of rehearsal in the emotional-integrative model

The emotional-integrative model (Finkenauer et al., 1998) suggests that the
intensity of an emotional state increases event rehearsal and, as a consequence,
strengthens event memory accuracy. Event memory, in turn, has a direct effect
Figure 4.2 Model of Flashbulb Memory and Event Memory Formation from Tinti
et al. (2013). Plain Arrows: Paths Expected to Be Significant; Short Dashed Arrow:
Path Expected not to Be Significant; Long Dashed Arrow: no Prediction.
on the formation of FBMs (Figure 4.1). One major contribution of the model
was to demonstrate the central role of rehearsing the actual event and its impact
on FBM consistency rather than the rehearsal of the FBM itself. When learning
about a FBM-generating event, all currently activated information – including
the reception context, sensory information, and the original event – is encoded
in memory in a web of associations (Tulving and Kroll, 1995). Thus, to sum up,
both the original event and the reception context (i.e. the FBMs) are simultane-
ously encoded. Subsequently, during rehearsal of the event itself, the reactivation
of this information in memory would spread and, in turn, activate the related
FBMs. In this way, rehearsal strengthens the associations between the different
elements constituting the memory of the entire experience, both event memory
and FBM (Johnson and Chalfonte, 1994).
Luminet (2009) reviewed datasets examining the potential link between
rehearsal and event memory in relation to the dominant models investigating
FBM formation (Brown and Kulik, 1977; Conway et al., 1994; Er, 2003; Finke-
nauer et al., 1998). In each case, rehearsal was operationalized by a composite
measure involving talking, thinking, and following the media. Out of fourteen
datasets, only five studies investigated the possibility of such a relation. The rea-
son for this relatively low number of investigations might stem from the fact that
no models of FBM included both rehearsal and event memory as predictors of
FBM, except Finkenauer et al. (1998). In four out of five cases the positive asso-
ciation between rehearsal and event memory accuracy was found to be signifi-
cant. The explanation for the non-significant association found in one case is that
a high level of social identity (an American sample interviewed about the 9/11
attacks) impaired the accuracy of event memories, suggesting that extreme levels
of social identity may moderate the influence of rehearsal (see Luminet, 2009;
Luminet and Curci, 2009).
Since Luminet’s review, recent studies have shown the importance of making
distinctions between the types of events considered (important/central vs. mun-
dane, Kvavilashvili et al., 2010; personally and culturally relevant vs. irrelevant,
Koppel et al., 2013) and between the types of rehearsals involved (emotional vs.
descriptive, Tinti et al., 2013; personal vs. from the media, Talarico and Moore,
2012). We will now consider how the type of event will have differential effects
on rehearsal and then on both event memory and FBM.
Type of event
Two studies’ results suggest that the type of event is determinant in the associa-
tion between rehearsal, event memory and FBM. First, Kvavilashvili et al. (2010)
examined two negatively valenced events, one central (i.e. the 9/11 terrorist
attacks), the other mundane (i.e. participants learning that they had not won a
small prize). The correlation between rehearsal and FBM consistency was positive
for the mundane event whereas it was negative for the central event. The authors
reasoned that central events, such as 9/11, are constantly rehearsed through con-
versations and media. These numerous rehearsals create multiple ‘memories’ of
the first time individuals heard the news of 9/11 and thereby lead to inconsistent
FBMs. Event memory, however, was not considered in that study.
Koppel et al. (2013) distinguished events according to their level of cultural
significance. In their study, they included two public events which occurred
almost at the same time: the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th presi-
dent of the United States on 20 January 2009 and the emergency landing of
US Airways Flight 1549 off the coast of Manhattan on 15 January 2009. The
former was considered culturally and personally significant given its historic
nature, while the latter was considered noteworthy but less culturally significant.
Through multiple regression analyses, Koppel et al. (2013) examined the best
predictors for event memory accuracy and for FBM consistency. Interestingly,
variations occurred across events but not across memory measures. For the plane
landing (i.e. less culturally important), rehearsal predicted both event memory
accuracy and FBM consistency. For the inauguration of Obama (i.e. more cultur-
ally important) rehearsal was not a predictor, while recalled emotional intensity
and personal importance predicted both memory types.
Type of rehearsal
As mentioned earlier, a second crucial variable for the formation of memories is
the type of rehearsal. Some studies found a positive correlation between media
coverage and event memory, but not between media coverage and FBM (Curci
and Luminet, 2006; Er, 2003; Shapiro, 2006). This suggests that media rehearsal
is particularly important in predicting event memory accuracy. Recently, a study
examined this issue with a model in which media rehearsal is considered inde-
pendently from the two other aspects of rehearsal (i.e. thinking and talking;
Tinti et al., 2013). Using the context of the Italian soccer team’s victory in the
2006 World Cup, they observed that event memory was only predicted by media
rehearsal, while FBM consistency was only predicted by the amount of talking
and thinking about the event (see Figure 4.2).
These authors advocated for the distinction in future studies between these
two types of rehearsal, with the rationale that they have different relations with
event memory accuracy and FBM consistency. Taking concrete examples from
the 2006 World Cup, they explained that one type of rehearsal mainly refers to
factual aspects of the event (e.g. who scored a goal, what the score was when the
regular game time elapsed, who failed to make the decisive penalty kick), which
would involve repeated consultation of information about the event across dif-
ferent media, thereby enhancing only event memory. The other types of rehearsal
(i.e. talking and thinking) focus on the person’s experience (e.g. his or her own
happiness and the happiness of others around, the noise of the honking cars and
bursting firecrackers, etc.). In this case, in which a more personal experience is
involved, thinking and talking should strengthen FBM consistency.
A very important outcome of this distinction is that it would explain why
FBMs are more sensitive to errors: FBMs are determined by specific, idiosyn-
cratic, and subjective emotional experiences and rehearsal, while event memories
are determined by the more objective measure of the degree of media exposure
and also by level of knowledge (Tinti et al., 2013). It is important to note, how-
ever, that these results cannot be directly compared with other events typically
studied in FBM research as they usually involve negative events. Italy winning the
2006 World Cup represented a positive event for Italians and therefore the mne-
monic processes found in Tinti et al.’s studies may be specific to positive events.
The role of rehearsal in eyewitness identification

The Finkenauer et al. model positions rehearsal as a pivotal point between
emotionality and event-memory accuracy. This pivotal point reflects the reten-
tion interval between the witnessing of the crime scene and identifying the
perpetrator. This period of time is considered critical for eyewitnesses’ memory
accuracy because memories can be subjected to distortions. Rehearsal is a source
of memory distortion, especially social sharing with others which can influence
the memories of both the speaker and the audience.
Rehearsal as source of memory distortion

Results from archival and experimental studies have shown that as time increases,
so do errors in face recognition (Dysart and Lindsay, 2007; for a meta-analysis
see Deffenbacher et al., 2008). One reason for this memory distortion is the
intervention of post-event information (Loftus, 2005). Post-event information
refers to information that the eyewitness comes across after witnessing the crime
and that may be integrated into the witness’s memory. This is particularly critical
when post-event information is misleading, as it can distort the witness’s memory
of the event by changing the characteristic of the scene or by implanting false
information. Furthermore, memory distortion and/or the implantation of false
memories can occur without the witness’s awareness. Then, once misleading
information is integrated into the witness’s memory, this witness will rehearse
false information without being able to distinguish it from the actual event he or
she witnessed (i.e. source monitoring errors).
Both covert and overt rehearsal can be sources of misleading information.
During covert rehearsal, the witness can refer to information already in mem-
ory, which becomes part of the crime scene and implicitly alters the original
event memory. For instance, criminal stereotypes can fill in memory blanks or
alter the memory of the perpetrator’s face. Denis may refer to his representa-
tion of the criminal face when he remembers that the robber had a scar on the
cheek. Overt rehearsal (i.e. social sharing and media) offers many opportuni-
ties for the witness to be exposed to misleading information via overhearing
co-witnesses, conversations with relatives and friends and/or media exposure.
Hearing another witness mentioning that the perpetrator had a beard may
then convince Denis that indeed the robber had a beard. Information about
crime and criminals is extensively present in the media about actual (news,
documentary) and fictitious (drama, movies) events. In addition to the news
related to the witnessed crime, the eyewitness’s attention can be drawn by
news coverage or fictitious events in movies and TV programs conveying
information about similar crimes. The extent to which a particular crime is
reported in the news depends on its importance. Important events, such as
those observed in FBM studies, are reported in national – if not international –
news, often repeated several times with long reports. Similarly, serious crimes
(due to a high number of victims or a particularly elevated shock or surprise
value) are reported in national news, but most of the less important crimes are
only briefly mentioned in local news. When watching the TV news and the
local newspaper, Denis exposed himself to the pictures of other robbers. Thus,
misleading information can come from media programs on the witnessed crime
or similar crimes. Furthermore, research on pre-trial publicity suggests that
information reported in the media are all facts and may or may not trigger
emotional arousal (Dumas et al., 2013; Ruva et al., 2011). Thus, in addition
to the objective amount of media exposure, the emotional impact of the media
also needs to be examined.
Social sharing: influencing the memories of both

the eyewitness and the audience
Social sharing is a communication context that includes a dynamic process of
mutual influences between the witnesses and either other witnesses or other
people they discuss the crime with. This means that (1) eyewitnesses are not a
passive transmitters of what they saw conveying the same report regardless of the
conversational context. Their testimony is sensitive to their audience; and (2) the
different people the witness discusses the crime with are not only passive recep-
tors of information. They also actively participate in the conversation according
to their interpretation of the context and their expectations of what witnesses
should know and how they should behave.
The eyewitness
The eyewitness has a particular status of the person who ‘saw’ the crime. In con-
trast with persons experiencing events examined in FBM studies, in many cases,
the eyewitness of a crime is the only person who truly knows about the event
and the perpetrator’s face. The eyewitness needs first to build up a common
base of knowledge with others before he or she is able to rehearse the event with
them. Thus, a first step of social sharing is informing others of what happened;
a second step of rehearsal can take place in order to complement others’ knowl-
edge and cope with the situation. One exemption to this is when several persons
witness the same crime. In this case, witnesses have, at least partly, a common
base of knowledge. This is the case in the study of Yuille and Cutshall (1986,
see this chapter’s introduction) in which results are close to those observed in
FBM studies.
Furthermore, according to a process of audience tuning (Echterhoff et al.,
2005), the witness adjusts the account of the crime to the assumed audience
expectations. When talking to friends, rehearsal is more emotionally oriented,
whereas when talking to the police, rehearsal focuses more on facts (Marsh et al.,
2005). Also, Marsh (2007) suggests that each of these different types of audi-
ence does not trigger the same processes of memory retrieval. During police
interrogation, the witness most probably recalls the event or the perpetrator’s
physical appearance, which elicits accuracy. During a conversation with friends,
the witness retells what happens with less emphasis on the accuracy of the
account. Finally, a higher motivation of the witness is to share a common knowl-
edge of the event with the audience, resulting in a stronger distorted memory
in congruence with the audience’s expectations (Hellmann et al., 2011; Kopietz
et al., 2009).
The audience
Though the eyewitness is the main source of information, others’ questions
contribute to the shaping of the witness’s knowledge of the crime by orient-
ing the theme under focus (i.e. crime facts and/or the eyewitness’s subjective
experience). Furthermore, the witness’s account will probably not be subject to
correction, at least at the initial stages of the investigation because the witness
is the ‘expert’, with first-hand knowledge about the crime scene. These audi-
ences, then, provide two different types of social sharing contexts: (1) friends
and relatives are partners for a spontaneous rehearsal as often studied in FBM
studies, and (2) the police investigation creates another context of rehearsal
specific to the eyewitness experience and not considered in the FBM research
context. This rehearsal is deliberate and elicited by the police interrogations.
Whereas it is not possible to prevent a witness from socially sharing the experi-
ence with family members, for example, or from being exposed to media (i.e.
estimator variable), the context of the ‘police rehearsal’ (i.e. system variable)
can be controlled in order to keep the memory trace of the crime scene and
the perpetrator’s face as intact as possible. The role of rehearsal has to be con-
sidered as a tool to maintain a witness’s accurate memory of the perpetrator.
In order to prevent any misleading information, the witness’s memory of the
crime and perpetrator’s face needs to be collected as early as possible. The arrest
of a suspect can take some time; as a result, a line-up identification can take
place several weeks after the crime. Meanwhile, the police have different tools
at hand to collect the witness’s memory of the perpetrator: the verbal descrip-
tion of the criminal, sketch artists or facial composites, presentation of previ-
ous suspects’ mugshots. Repeated verbal descriptions provide a more complete
description and help to strengthen the witness’s memory, especially if the reten-
tion interval is short (Meissner et al., 2007). However, as with social sharing,
repeated questioning may lead witnesses to incorporate erroneous information
into their testimony (Roediger et al., 1996), especially if the witness is required
to report details s/he is uncertain about (Meissner, 2002).
The relation between FBMs and event memory

The last component of Finkenauer et al.’s model is the relation between flashbulb
memory and the event memory.
From event memory to FBMs

As explained above, event memory and FBMs are strongly associated simply
because when learning about a new situation, both the situation itself and the
reception context are encoded simultaneously. Then, when people rehearse the
original event, they consciously or unconsciously reactivate their FBMs. In line
with Finkenauer et al.’s model, Luminet (2009) showed that while the path
between rehearsal and event memory is often found, no study established a direct
association between rehearsal and FBMs. Furthermore, the association between
event memory and FBM is found across datasets and models of reference (Lumi-
net, 2009). This association might, however, be less systematic than expected.
In their recent study, Tinti et al. (2013) did not find a significant association
between these two memory variables. They even suggest fundamental differences
between them:
Flashbulb memories entail a first-person perspective and involve qualia, and

can be considered part of what some philosophers (e.g., Malcolm, 1963)
define as ‘experiential memory.’ In contrast, event memory consists of fac-
tual information about the original event. For this reason, flashbulb memory
may differ for each person, whereas event memory, if correctly encoded and
stored, should be identical for everyone.
(Tinti et al., 2013, p. 3)
Tinti et al. (2013) are the first to find no relation between these two memo-
ries because their model of FBM and event memory formation was also the first
to make a distinction between two aspects of rehearsal (descriptive through the
media vs. experiential through thinking and talking, see above).
One important outcome of their proposal is that if the two types of memory
are independent, the following situations can occur:
People may recall details about an event without remembering the circum-
stances in which they first learned about it. People may also recall how they
first learned about an event without recalling many details about the event
itself. Both the fact that flashbulb memories can result from reconstructive
processes and the fact that they can exist independently from event memory
merit further research, because they have important implications for real-
world concerns such as the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
(Tinti et al., 2013, p. 11 in preprint)
From the context of a crime to the memory of the perpetrator’s face

In the context of crime eyewitness identification, the relation between the event
memory and FBM is examined inversely relative to FBM research. The memory
of the context is used to improve the memory of the perpetrator. For this, the
eyewitness is mentally or physically reinstated into the context of the crime scene.
For instance, the Cognitive Interview (CI) includes a mental re-enactment of
the crime scene in order to access memory of the perpetrator (Fisher and Geisel-
man, 1992). The CI is an interviewing protocol designed to improve accuracy
and completeness of eyewitnesses’ recall. The CI includes several phases favoring
the free witness’s narrative account and discouraging disruption and questioning
(Holliday et al., 2009). One of the CI’s phases is a mental context reinstatement,
which takes the form of an open-ended narration ‘in which the interviewee is
encouraged to mentally reconstruct the physical and personal context that existed
at the time of the event’ (Memon et al., 2010, p. 341). During this time, the
interviewer does not intervene in order to prevent distortion of the witness’s
memory. According to the meta-analysis of Memon et al. (2010), which included
forty-six studies, the CI systematically enhances the number of correct details
(d = 1.20) and, to a smaller extent, the number of incorrect details (d = .24) rela-
tive to a control (structured) interview. These results are consistent with a previ-
ous meta-analysis by Köhnken et al. (1999) conducted ten years earlier (correct
details: d = 0.87; incorrect details: d = 0.28). Furthermore, the CI improves the
memory of central and peripheral details (i.e. details associated with vs. unassoci-
ated with the central character) compared to a structured interview (Ginet and
Verkampt, 2010).
Regarding physical reinstatement, Wong and Read (2011) conducted an
experimental study to test the effect of physical reinstating context on both eye-
witness recall and identification. Participants watched a video of a staged theft.
One week later, they were placed either in the same or a different room in which
they watched the video and they were asked to recall the event and to identify the
perpetrator in a lineup. For suspect identification, context reinstatement resulted
in more accurate identifications in the target-present lineup condition than par-
ticipants in a different context. Participants were also more willing to choose a
suspect, had a greater sense of familiarity with who the suspect was, and a higher
level of confidence in their choice. However, results suggest that physical context
reinstatement also improves subjects’ distinction between target and filler. That
is, in the target-absent condition, context reinstatement did not result in more
fillers identifications.
Finally, physical reinstatement does not necessarily mean that the witness needs
to be placed again in the actual crime scene. An important object from the crime
scene can be enough to place the eyewitness back in the event context. For exam-
ple, Smith et al. (2013) manipulated context reinstatement with the presence (vs.
absence) of the stolen property during the identification of a robber in a simulated
case of theft. They observed that the presence of the stolen property increased
the eyewitness identification accuracy (in a target-present line-up). The research-
ers explained this result using the Item Context Ensemble (ICE) theory for rec-
ognition memory (Murnane et al., 1999). The ICE suggests that one item (i.e.
central information) and a context (i.e. environmental information) are encoded
together and bound in memory. Thus, as suggested by FBM studies, the rehearsal
of these different elements should strengthen the memory of the entire experience
via network of associations. Finally, the benefit of context reinstatement depends
on the emotionality of the reception context. Brown (2003) compared the effect
of context reinstatement for peripheral (photo of a bystander) and central (photo
of the central character) information during arousing, non-arousing, and neu-
tral events. Context reinstatement improved recognition memory of peripheral
information in non-arousing and neutral event conditions, whereas memory for
central information was enhanced in the arousing event condition.
In the eyewitness field, the memory of the context, which refers to FBM, is
used to enhance the memory of the event. Thus, while in Finkenauer et al.’s
(1998) model for FBM formation, rehearsal activates event memory, which will
then activate FBM, in the eyewitness literature, the assumption is that activat-
ing the context memory will then help to access and improve event memory.
This assumption favors a link between the two types of memory, rather than two
independent memories as proposed by Tinti et al. (2013), even though both
memories may be the result of different processes.
Conclusion
The aim of this chapter was an attempt to draw associations between two rela-
tively independent fields of research: FBM and eyewitness identification. The
challenge was to observe how each field could benefit from the other both theo-
retically and empirically. After a description of the two fields, the chapter focused
primarily on the three components of Finkenauer et al.’s (1998) model: the emo-
tional reception context of the event, the role of rehearsal in memory formation,
and the links between event memory and FBM. From the discussion of these
points, several conclusions can be drawn which can help lead to mutual contribu-
tions to the two fields of study, FBM and eyewitness identification.
Methods and memory accuracy

The connection between the two fields is not obvious at first sight. The two
domains indeed have different goals in their understanding of memory processes
and they use different methods. However, both are based on observation fields
and examine events which share the same cognitive (novelty, importance, atti-
tudes, knowledge) and emotional (surprise, level of arousal) features. In mir-
rored positions, both fields are confronted with the same question of the reliable
reproduction of a real life context credible enough while also remaining ethically
sound in order to protect the participants. The importance of memory accuracy
appears to be a decisive criterion for deciding whether an experimental method
in a laboratory context or a more ecologically valid context (i.e. surveys, archival
studies, field studies) is the more appropriate research method. It is essential for
eyewitness studies to determine the conditions in which an eyewitness is more
or less reliable. The use of a controlled experimental environment with labora-
tory methods is necessary to understand the causal memory processes at work
and provide police and courtrooms with clues. As a consequence, the number
of archival studies or surveys in the field is low (Lampinen et al., 2012; Wells
and Penrod, 2011). Even if this is not a decisive argument indicating a potential
lack of external validity (Penrod and Bornstein, 2007), these types of studies are
necessary to keep experimental studies close to actual eyewitness identification
issues. FBM studies, alternatively, emphasize the observation of highly ecological
situations in order to gain access to people’s actual experience of highly surprising
and emotional events. While surveys are highly ecologically valid, they lack con-
trol of the key variables. Laboratory studies provide good experimental control,
but they are artificial and distant from reality. Future FBM research should try
to operationalize the critical FBM variables (e.g. novelty, surprise, importance,
emotional reactions, rehearsal) in laboratory situations. This could help better
elucidate the role of emotional, cognitive, and social factors in the formation of
FBMs and event memory. Each field, with its own means, brings a contribution
to understanding when individuals have accurate and inaccurate recollections of
past events. On the one hand, the results of eyewitness identification studies have
demonstrated that the three memory accuracy proxies used in FBM studies (con-
fidence, consistency and vividness) are not systematically associated with memory
accuracy. On the other hand, FBM research suggests that the links between eye-
witness confidence, consistency and vividness should be closely examined, as they
can be collected in the actual context of a police investigation. Bringing these
two fields of research together will, we believe, provide a deeper understanding
of the interaction between these three variables and how they are associated with
memory (in)accuracy.
Emotional context
The emotional context of the reception of the event is an important factor in both
fields of research. Finkenauer et al.’s model offers a definition of this context in
terms of novelty (and surprise), importance and attitude toward the event. These
three contextual characteristics are also examined in the eyewitness field. Results
suggest that novelty (and surprise) may elicit different types of emotion, which,
in turn, may orient the content of the rehearsal. Also, the event’s importance
may differ depending whether it is in regard to the seriousness of the crime, or
its consequences for the eyewitness. Furthermore, eyewitness studies suggest that
the attentional focus of the eyewitness depends on the amount of stress arousal
in the reception context. A high (or low) emotional reception context results in
a partial encoding of the event. Further studies with the experimental manipula-
tion of these characteristics of the reception context (limited to acceptable ethical
boundaries, as mentioned above) would help elucidate how different reception
contexts impact the attentional focus and, in turn, information encoding.
The role of rehearsal

The role of rehearsal is examined in different ways in the two fields. FBM
research has shown how crucial memory of the event is an intermediate variable
in the association between rehearsal and FBMs. But variations in this relation
occur depending on the type of event and the type of rehearsal considered.
These findings could be worth considering in the eyewitness identification field
by underlining the importance of an event’s cultural significance and also by
distinguishing between different forms of rehearsal (e.g. factual vs. experiential).
These results also offer interesting avenues regarding interventions focused on
specific types of rehearsal (i.e. overt vs. covert rehearsal). In contrast, in eyewit-
ness identification studies, rehearsal (overt and covert) is critical because of the
integration of post-event information in memory. Knowing if post-event infor-
mation has distorted the witness’s memory is essential in order to know whether
the witness is reliable or not. The context of rehearsal is essential, especially in
terms of the impact both the speaker and audience can have on each other’s
memories. The audience orients the topic of the rehearsal because of the eyewit-
ness’s expectations and the goals of the audience. While a spontaneous rehearsal
cannot be controlled, the deliberate rehearsal in the context of police investiga-
tion can be modified in order to be less intrusive and prevent the implantation
of misleading information.
Relation between context memory and event memory

Finally, the two fields have different approaches in examining the association
between context memory and event memory. FBM studies suggest either a uni-
directional link or no link between event memory and FBM (Tinti et al., 2013).
Eyewitness research, however, examines how the memory of the context could
improve the memory of the event (i.e. event and face). Integrating the two fields
of research would lead to a better understanding of the possible bi-directional
nature of these two types of memory and how influencing one may improve the
performance of the other.
Concluding thoughts
By demonstrating how these fields of research, FBM and eyewitness identifica-
tion, may be integrated, we hope we have illustrated the similarities and differ-
ences between the two. More importantly, though, we hope that doing so will
help promote stimulating, theoretical and empirical debates as well as fruitful and
exciting areas of future research.
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Part II
Social and cultural

perspectives
5 Context in the cultural
psychology of remembering
Illustrated with a case study of
conflict in national memory
Ignacio Brescó and Brady Wagoner
Introduction
Cultural psychology’s approach to memory begins with the idea that memory
cannot adequately be explored as an independent faculty. Rather it instead must
be studied as an activity – hence, the preference for the gerund ‘remembering’
over the static noun ‘memory’. Moreover, remembering always takes place within
a particular context, against the background of a group’s values, traditions and
practices. Contexts are always rooted in history, dynamically carrying forward an
accumulation of social interactions internalized and reconstructed by the persons
involved (Cole, 1996; Valsiner, 2007). From this perspective, there is no such
thing as a purely individual activity; we are always dealing with the individual
within a certain set of contextual conditions – for example, the individual-in-the-
laboratory and the individual-in-a-given social group (Bartlett, 1923).
The concept of context thus transcends a purely physical description of a
person’s environment – the notion of ‘behavior setting’ à la Barker (1968) is
insufficient to the task of analyzing context. Contexts are the construction and
reconstruction of agents in relation to an environment that is physical, social
and symbolic (Moscovici, 1984). What people respond to is, in large part, their
own construction, guided by the social groups to which they belong. In this
way, context is always a transitive term, being neither wholly in the environment
nor in the person, but rather in the history of relations between the two. This
conception of context comes close to the original meaning of Frederic Bartlett’s
notion of schema, a self-generated and situated context of action, which needs to
be distinguished from its use today as a de-contextualized knowledge structure
in the head (Wagoner, 2013).
Recent cultural psychology research adds to this conceptualization of context
as constructed by people with the notion of sign mediation (Valsiner, 2007). This
idea goes back in psychology to Lev Vygotsky, who argued that human beings
actively manipulate their environment with signs in order to prospectively regu-
late their remembering (Vygotsky, 1987) – for example, building monuments at
a group level or decorating one’s room with objects and pictures at an individual
level. Other signs include the narratives and social representations that circulate
within the group, and are used as a resource in remembering (Wertsch, 2002).
70 Ignacio Brescó and Brady Wagoner
Understanding the construction of context through the use of signs and the con-
ditions it imposes on psychological functioning becomes the central question for
the cultural psychology of remembering.
In this chapter, we explore what cultural psychology can contribute to our
understanding of remembering as a contextualized process, illustrated with a case
study of conflict in national memory. We begin by outlining some central prem-
ises of cultural psychology, namely: (a) we must situate individuals as members
of groups with a history to understand their action; (b) culture cannot, however,
be simply treated as a variable that causes some behavior, but rather should be
thought of as a resource people use in performing some action; (c) psychological
processes (e.g. remembering) are distributed between individuals and cultural
artifacts (or resources); and (d) a person’s use of cultural resources and action
socially positions him or her vis-à-vis others in society. These premises are fleshed
out in relation to national conflicts, where ‘the nation’ becomes a particularly
powerful and taken-for-granted sign in the construction of a context of action.
We will illustrate these notions by examining how differently positioned social
actors construct narratives of the Basque conflict in Spain.
Cultural psychology’s approach

The discipline of psychology has focused almost exclusively on the reactivity of
human beings, that is, how their behavior is determined by some external factor.
This has been done at the expense of a focus on human creativity, where humans
are considered future oriented-beings, constructing novel cultural forms to deal
with the contingencies of their situation (Valsiner, 2012; Glâveanu et al., 2014).
In published articles, most psychologists tend to simply provide correlations
between stimulus and response, input and output, independent and dependent
variables to predict some isolated human reaction. As a consequence, culture has
tended to be seen as mere noise that had to be expelled from psychology in order
to access what was believed to be a deeper, universal, central processing level
of mind (e.g. Gardner, 1985; see Shweder, 1991, for a critique). This sidelines
the investigation of ‘higher’ forms of human activity as can be seen in creating
works of art, writing books, organizing revolutions and even creating stock mar-
kets. These cultural novelties are the result of active agents working within and
through the background of certain values, traditions and practices.
When culture was finally (re)introduced into psychology1 it was often concep-
tualized as little more than a variable (as in comparing culture A vs. culture B
on some standard measure) that has an ‘influence’ on some reaction already suf-
ficient unto itself. In response to a study by Cole and Gray (1972) on cultural
differences in remembering, one anthropologist commented: ‘The reasoning and
thinking processes of different people in different cultures don’t differ . . . just
their values, beliefs, and ways of classifying differ [personal communication]’
(p. 1066). In contrast to this, cultural psychology starts with the assumption that
cultural artifacts, practices and social others directly participate in and are consti-
tutive of psychological processes, and, therefore, cannot be studied independently
The cultural psychology of remembering 71
of them (Cole, 1996; Wagoner and Gillespie, 2014). Long ago Bartlett (1932)
made the same critique of Ebbinghaus’s (1885) nonsense syllable method: by
stripping ‘memory’ of meaning and context, Ebbinghaus lost the very phenom-
ena of interest.
Cultural psychology, therefore, explores the interdependence of human minds
and the social-cultural worlds to which they belong (Shweder 1991). This is done
through an idiographic analysis of situated individuals and groups as they con-
struct meaning to meet the particular demands of their life situations (Valsiner,
2007). The basic premise is that human beings act on the world on the basis of
the meaning that they give to it (Bruner, 1990). The construction of meaning
is a cultural process, dynamically negotiated between people and the world in
which they live. Vygotsky referred to it as a process of sign mediation. Media-
tion implies changing a relation between two parts, here person and world. It is
cultural in that signs are first encountered between people (intermentally) and
only later do they re-emerge in the child herself (intramentally). For example,
language is a social product first encountered in interactions with others, but
in development of language’s internalization it transforms the child’s thinking
and problem-solving (Vygotsky, 1986). Language then functions to regulate the
child’s action, enabling her to master herself.
At this point it is worth contrasting cultural psychology’s understanding of
culture as a process of meaning-making with its ‘sister discipline’ cross-cultural
psychology’s notion of culture as a kind of container. Cross-cultural psychology
has made seminal contributions by showing that many of the assumed-to-be-
universal findings of psychology did not generalize to people living outside the
Western world. It has been noted that those typically sampled for psychological
studies are from North America or Europe, and can be considered outlier cases
within humanity as a whole. In other words, the typical participants in psycho-
logical studies are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Demo-
cratic) (Henrich et al., 2010). However, culture in this cross-cultural approach
has rarely been considered anything more than a ‘variable’, which was said to
‘cause’ certain behaviors or mental processes – e.g., people in Denmark are con-
ceptualized as ‘belonging to’ the ‘Danish culture’ that ‘causes’ them to behave
in ‘a Danish way’. Such explanations are circular and do not explain how culture
concretely operates, why people behave differently in a common culture or how
people are able to develop novel ways of acting and/or thinking (Valsiner, 2007).
In contrast, cultural psychology’s focus has been on exploring how individuals
use culture as a psychological tool (or ‘sign’) in relating to their world. This is
not to say that human beings do not relate to the wider traditions and values of
the group of which they are members – they do – but that ‘sharing’ of culture
can only be episodic and partial. Culture is distributed between people in a soci-
ety as a function of a person’s identity, needs and location in social space, and
is continuously reconstructed in its use. Hence, our analysis must focus on how
individuals and groups use culture to orient to the future and solve problems in
their lives, and how this in turn transforms their understanding of themselves,
others and the world (Wagoner, 2010). Thus, rather than a cause of behavior,
culture becomes a means or resource for a person performing an action. In the
next section we describe the construction of nationalism as a resource or sign
that is central to the context of modern societies, and how it can lead to conflicts
through the co-existence of different national groups within the same state.
Identity and positioning in remembering nationalist

conflicts
Since the publication of Maurice Halbwachs’ works (1980; 1992) at the begin-
ning of the last century, it has been widely assumed that the way we reconstruct
the past is socially contextualized and strongly shaped by the groups we live
and identify with. In turn, as scholars from different fields point out, the past
constitutes, at the same time, a key symbolic resource through which the very
sense of identity – whether personal (Ricoeur, 1991) or collective (Hobsbawm,
1990) – can be generated. As far as national identity is concerned, the widespread
use of historical narratives has been extensively underlined as a key factor for the
creation of a shared sense of the past and consequently for the generation of an
imagined community (Anderson, 1983) based on a collective feeling of belong-
ing. So viewed, the nationalization of the masses (Mosse, 1975) carried out from
the beginning of the nineteenth century can be understood in light of the social
representations theory (Moscovici, 1984). Thus, on the one hand, through a
process of objectification – expressed by the ubiquitous presence of national his-
tories and symbols such as flags, monuments or maps within society – the initially
abstract idea of a nation becomes something concrete and taken for granted,
even banal (Billig, 1995), becoming part of people’s common sense. And, on the
other hand, the internalization of this national standpoint leads to an anchoring
process through which people interpret reality – past, present and future – in
national terms.
The shared belief in the existence of nations is a social representation, which
forms part of the cultural context of most societies today. This worldview encom-
passes, at the same time, a set of values, norms and principles prescribing how
reality should be. As Billig (2001) points out, ‘when groups declare themselves
to be national groups, they are making particular political statements, evoking
an ideological history of entitlements and rights’ (p. 219). Out of these rights,
Gellner (1983) highlights a political principle, inherent to any kind of national-
ism, according to which the political and the national unit must be congruent,
or to put it in other words, every nation should be politically sovereign and
consequently should have its own state. In fact, the present worldwide assump-
tion of the nationalist outlook has made this principle become natural and
commonsensical.
However, problems begin to arise when it comes to fleshing out this abstract
principle, more specifically, in defining the very idea of the nation and delimiting
its corresponding territory. Thus, together with the manifold ways of charac-
terizing national groups and theorizing their supposed defining traits,2 we also
find contrasting partisan accounts aimed at historically justifying the attribution
of certain political or territorial rights to such national groups. This happens
whenever a group – with a sense of identity at odds with that of the rest of the
population – perceives itself as a fully fledged nation and, consequently, does not
feel legitimately represented by the overarching structure of the state. In these
cases, this group would be disposed to strive for independence and to form its
own national state. Such a situation translates into different degrees of political
unrest, since the very conception of ‘nation‐state unit’ referred to above would
be in dispute. Hence, the coexistence of two national identities under the same
overarching state structure usually leads to competing positioning, prescribing
different rights and duties.
Positioning theory: rights and duties in dispute

Positioning theory is defined by Harré (2004) as ‘the study of the way rights
and duties are taken up and laid down, ascribed and appropriated, refused and
defended in the fine grain of the encounters of daily lives’ (p. 4). Conceived as
a starting point for reflecting upon different aspects of social life (Harré and van
Langenhove, 1999), this framework has also been applied to situations and con-
flicts of greater temporal scale (see, e.g., Moghaddam and Kavulich, 2008). In
these cases, positioning refers to the set of rights and duties that different political
actors – such as groups or states – discursively attribute both to themselves and
to other actors according to the way they come to define the very nature of the
conflict. In nationalistic conflicts, for instance, we typically find two confronted
positionings corresponding to different ways of applying the nation-state unit
principle mentioned above. On one side, there is a positioning from which it is
claimed the right to preserve the integrity of the existing national state and the
duty to defend it against any separatist attempt. On the other side, the aspira-
tion of a minority group to achieve the same nation‐state unit principle involves
a positioning from which it is claimed that the duty of the existing state is to
recognize the rights of such a group to self‐determination, a group which in turn
might undertake the duty to fight for such a right, even resorting to force.
Positionings are instantiated through discourse. As Harré (2005) points out,
‘duties and rights exist in the discursive domain’ (p. 237). That is why nationalist
conflicts are characterized by the presence of different story-lines which compete
to impose different forms of defining or thematizing the conflict according to the
political goals at stake. These forms include a plot that usually conveys a moral
content (White, 1986) – for example by indicating what the conflict is about,
when it was initiated and by whom, and what must be done to restore the status
quo and rule of law. The distribution of these story-lines – whether in schools,
through the media, etc. – makes them the mediational tools3 people have at hand
to reconstruct the past, interpret the present and orientate their future actions
according to the positioning held by the group they identify with. So viewed,
remembering occurs within an argumentative context (Billig, 1991) character-
ized by the presence of different and contrasting narratives which, in conveying
a way of thematizing the conflict, provide a criterion by which people select,
interpret, appraise, and even infer facts in a way that fits a predetermined story-
line (see Brescó, 2008).
As stated at the beginning, remembering can hardly be conceived as an inde-
pendent faculty that operates in a vacuum in search for an accurate reproduction
of the past. In line with Bartlett’s tradition, different authors (see, e.g., Kashima,
2000; Middleton and Brown, 2007; Saito, 2000) understand it as rather a socio-
culturally situated activity aimed at giving meaning to the past in order to meet
different demands or purposes, whether by individuals or collectives. Hence, the
reconstruction of the past when it comes to conflicts also takes place with a view
to the future, aiming at channeling the present into certain political goals, which
are frequently presented as the solution to the conflict. Here it is worth mention-
ing the concept of prolepsis, defined by Cole (1996) as the process by which an
imagined final cause acquires pragmatic force for current action.4 As far as nation-
alistic conflicts are concerned, we find different political goals and contrasting
positionings whose claims are based largely on certain forms of reconstructing and
thematizing the past, which, in turn, provide the rationale for future actions. So
viewed, it could be said that discourses about the past create a context, in which it
is not only acceptable, but even a duty, to undertake certain types of actions aimed
at fulfilling those rights claimed by each warring faction (Slocum, 2008).
Remembering the peace process of 2006 in the Basque

Country: a case study of conflict in national memory
To sum up, the creation and distribution of diverse cultural artifacts – for exam-
ple, historical narratives and national symbols – has resulted in the social repre-
sentation of the nation in contemporary societies. This implies providing people
with symbolic tools for interpreting social reality, which comes to be viewed in
national terms. In this respect, the nationalistic worldview has also led to conflicts
based on the co-existence of different national identities within the same state;
something that translates into a context characterized by contrasting position-
ings through which groups claim different rights and duties according to their
political goals and their particular way of defining or thematizing the conflict. As
said, this is done via discourse. Hence, this context is also of a symbolic nature,
characterized by the presence of different narratives and story-lines which medi-
ate the way individuals interpret, remember and act vis-à-vis the conflict accord-
ing to their identification with a certain group. The study presented below aims
at examining the contextualized dimensions of remembering by accounting for
the meditational role of narratives in the reconstruction of the past. In this case
we have centered on the nationalist-based conflict in the Basque Country5 – an
autonomous region situated in the northern part of the Spanish state. In par-
ticular, we analyzed how subjects, identified with different political actors, adopt
their respective positioning and interpretation of the conflict, and how, in the
light of it, they select and give sense to different documents related to a specific
event during this conflict: the failed peace‐making process between the terrorist
group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna: ‘Basque Homeland and Liberty’) and the
Spanish government that took place in 2006.6 In this respect, it is worth noting
that this study does not focus on the positionings held by the political actors
which took part in this episode – namely the set of rights and duties each actor
claims – but on how the adoption of such positionings on the part of participants
results in a certain form of thematizing the conflict which, in turn, mediates the
way the peace process is remembered.
Subjects
Sixteen undergraduate students participated in this study – eight from the
Autonomous University of Madrid and eight from the University of the Basque
Country – of whom only three have been included in this paper: one from
the Basque Country and two from Madrid. With the aim of making more visible
the contextualized dimension of remembering, we have selected those partici-
pants who clearly identified with the positions taken by the three main political
actors involved in the peace‐making process, in order to show three different
ways of remembering this episode according to different forms of thematizing
the Basque conflict. These actors are: (1) the Spanish Government, headed at
that time by the socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who
defended the legitimacy of the peace-making process; (2) ETA and its political
arm Batasuna, which advocates for the independence of the Basque Country and
legitimizes the armed struggle; and (3) the right wing Popular Party – the main
group of the Opposition at that time – which delegitimized the peace process
from the beginning by accusing the socialist government of negotiating with ter-
rorists and making political concessions in exchange for keeping the peace.
Materials and procedure

The process of data collection implied the visit of the first author both to the
Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of the Basque Country,
situated in San Sebastian. In both cases, an individual interview was arranged
with those subjects interested in participating in this study. Participation involved
the following three tasks:
1 Thematization of the Basque conflict: participants were first asked to give a

brief definition of the Basque conflict – in order to provide a baseline from
which they already thematized the Basque conflict – followed by its corre-
sponding resolution.
2 Presentation of news sources for developing an account of the peace process: after
finishing the previous task, each participant was given three sheets of paper
containing twenty-three short documents about the 2006 peace-making
process extracted from diverse Spanish newspapers.7 These documents –
arranged chronologically – were composed of five pictures, ten broadsheet
headlines and eight brief extracts of statements delivered by the main political
actors involved in the process (see example of each type in Table 5.1).
Table 5.1 Examples of the Different Type of News Sources Provided to Participants
Type of document Example

Broadsheet ‘More detentions, reports of torture and prohibitions of
heading Batasuna’s demonstrations’ (Gara, pro-Batasuna newspaper)
Political ‘The Popular Party’s cooperation is key to achieving the end of
statement violence’ (Spanish prime minister José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero)
3 Writing a story about the peace process: participants were then asked to observe
carefully the handed-out material in order to write down a short account of
the peace-making process. It was emphasized that there were neither good
nor bad stories, highlighting the point that we were primarily interested in
collecting their own version of the peace-making process. Subjects were
allowed to use and interpret the sources in any way they wished, for example
by only using those documents which already supported their views, omit-
ting those they found irrelevant or conflicted with their views, or adding
whatever extra information they reckoned appropriate.8
Analysis of data
Data analysis was carried out in two phases. First, participants’ positioning on
the Basque conflict was examined. Such positionings were not inferred exclu-
sively from the political party these subjects sympathized with, but from the
manner they initially thematized the conflict by implicitly attributing a set of
rights and duties to the main political actors involved. In this respect, we pro-
ceeded ‘not by assuming a typology of persons [. . .] prior to discursive action,
but by assuming that activities of positioning indeed take place in discourse’
(Carbaugh, 1999, p. 175). Second, we analyzed the accounts of the peace-
making process yielded by participants. Here attention was paid to how their
respective thematization and positioning vis-à-vis the conflict mediated the
way this event was reconstructed – namely, which documents were selected or
ignored by each participant and what meaning and function these documents
acquired within each account. In this respect, each account was compared with
the above-mentioned list of twenty-three short documents about the peace-
making process in order to examine which of them were mentioned in each
participant’s story line.
Results
Green
In order to protect the anonymity of our subjects, we will provide them all
with code names. Our first subject is ‘Green’. Green is an 18-year-old male
who studies psychology at the Basque Country University and identifies with
Batasuna’s positioning. The following is Green’s original thematization of the
Basque conflict and a possible resolution, prior to the presentation of the news
sources:
Thematization of the Basque conflict: ‘It is a conflict between an oppressed

nation and two oppressor states (Spain and France) which refuse to recognize the
right all democratic states have: the right to self determination. This situation has
led to an armed conflict.’
Conflict resolution: ‘Negotiations should involve all political options. The men-
tioned states should give Basque citizens the right to decide their own future. Then
ETA would declare another truce. Regardless, whenever ETA has declared a truce,
the Spanish state continues to repress, detain and ban Basque political parties.’
Green clearly takes Batasuna’s positioning and makes it his own. Accordingly, he
thematizes the conflict by highlighting the oppression of the Basque people by both
the Spanish and French state. Thus, from this positioning, the following distribution
of rights and duties are at stake: the Basque nation desires the right to be listened to
and to self-determination. By that same token, it is the duty of the Spanish state to
listen to the Basque people and to recognize their right to self‐determination. And,
finally, as long as these conditions fail to be met, ETA has the right to take up arms.
If we now examine Green’s account of the peace-making process produced
from the list of twenty-three documents, we can observe that he has rationalized
his understanding of the conflict:
ETA declares a truce and stops all its actions. The Government says that it
is willing to meet with ETA. Batasuna shows its willingness to negotiate the
future of the Basque Country. The Spanish state keeps imprisoning, tortur-
ing and oppressing the Basque People, and, especially, Batasuna and its sup-
porters. Given the course of events and the Government’s incapacity to take
a step forward, ETA decides to warn the Government by planting a bomb in
the Madrid airport. The Government doesn’t react and the truce comes to
an end. Then, ETA returns to its armed struggle.
As this version of events shows, despite ETA’s good intentions, the Spanish
Government failed in its democratic duty by not listening to the Basque people,
therefore causing ETA to exercise its right to resume the armed struggle. Fur-
thermore, it is worth noting that Green fails to mention – included in the handed
out media sources – any reference to ETA’s violent activities committed dur-
ing the truce while emphasizing the detention and torture of ETA members by
the Government. Likewise, here it is the Government that is responsible for the
truce’s failure by not responding to ETA’s warning in the form of a bomb attack.
This is a peculiar way to construct the peace-making process; one in which vio-
lence is seen as a form of dialogue.
Red
The second subject, ‘Red’, is a 19-year-old-male who studies psychology in
Madrid. He sympathizes with Zapatero’s Socialist Party and with his positioning
on the Basque issue – at that time more prone to find a negotiated exit to the
conflict. Red’s view on both the conflict and a possible resolution is as follows:
Thematization of the Basque conflict: It started as a conflict centered on the

Basque collective identity and rights. However, nowadays it is an armed conflict
centered on political, economic and social interests.’
Conflict resolution: ‘Arms must give way to words. More dialogue and con-
sensus among all the political parties (including both Batasuna and the Popular
Party) is required. The Basque language and identity must be preserved.’
As can be noted, Red thematizes the conflict as one that arises out of differ-
ent economic and political interests where arms prevail over words, though he
also recognizes its origins in identity. From this positioning we can infer that the
Government has both the duty and the right to look for dialogue and consensus.
It is also its duty to preserve the Basque cultural identity – and by the same token,
the Basque nation would have the right to both defend its culture and have it pre-
served on the part of the Spanish Government. In turn, it is ETA’s duty to change
arms for words. Thus, contrary to Green’s thematization of the issue, the armed
struggle is not regarded as forming part of its solution but as one of its main
problems and also the major impediment to dialogue. It then follows that both
Batasuna and the Popular Party have a duty to support dialogue and consensus.
From this way of understanding the conflict, Red produced the following account
of the peace‐making process from the list of twenty-three documents provided:
ETA announces a ceasefire followed by a peace plan based on dialogue which

is supported by all political parties except the right (Popular Party). From the
very beginning there is a constant opposition by the right, which jeopardized
the process. In fact, the right organized several demonstrations with the sole
aim of making the peace process fail. They tainted the Socialist Party with
conspiracy theories and accused Zapatero of yielding to ETA’s claims despite
the fact that during those days the Government detained more individuals
than any previous administration. In turn, ETA kept using violent means.
Given the impossibility to reach an agreement (where you have to first lose in
order to win), ETA broke the ceasefire, thus ruining any possibility of main-
taining the dialogue. But, despite the failure, it was worth trying it, wasn’t it?
As can be observed from Red’s account, the truce’s failure is attributed both to
the Popular Party and ETA. As for the Popular Party, this participant highlights
the conspiracy theories put forward by the right and the accusations of surren-
der made against the Government, which Red contrasts with the great number
of arrests made during the peace-making process. It is worth noting that this
account is quite different from that of Green. Unlike Green’s, Red’s version of
the peace-making process defends the Government against the accusations of not
fulfilling its duty of going after the terrorists. As for ETA’s role, Red’s version,
unlike Green’s, includes the violent activities carried out by ETA, which played a
major role in destroying the truce.
Blue
Our last subject, ‘Blue’, is an 18-year-old female who studies psychology in
Madrid and sympathizes with the right wing Popular Party. She defined the con-
flict and its possible resolutions in the following terms:
Thematization of the Basque conflict: ‘There is a group of people from that

region who don’t feel Spanish so they use violence.’
Conflict resolution: ‘To increase police involvement, to toughen the laws and to
eliminate the anti-Spanish feelings inculcated in their schools.’
According to Blue’s positioning, the violence exerted by a supposed anti‐
Spanish faction constitutes the main problem. This type of thematizing the
conflict assumes a connection between not feeling Spanish and resorting to vio-
lence; a view that delegitimizes those who feel Basque instead of Spanish. This
view suggests that while the ‘anti‐Spanish’ group lacks rights, the Spanish state
has both the right and the duty to strengthen the fight against those who use
violence, dismissing the idea of dialogue with them. An additionally important
aspect of Blue’s view is the fact that she does not even mention the name of the
region in question, i.e. the Basque Country. This distant, if not unfriendly, atti-
tude towards this region can be seen by her use of the third person plural when
she refers to ‘the anti‐Spanish feelings inculcated in their schools’, expressing an
‘Us vs. Them’ interpretation of the conflict.
Her version of the peace‐making process produced from the list of twenty-
three documents is as follows:
Thanks to a series of secret agreements between ETA and the Socialist Party,
with many concessions made by the latter, a truce was achieved. During the
supposed truce period, the Government was completely willing to talk with
the terrorists while they kept on committing terrorist acts. Thousands of
Spaniards marched, demanding that Zapatero stop yielding to ETA’s claims.
In turn, the Popular Party broke with the Government due to Zapatero’s
erroneous strategy. This event reached its end with the terrorist attack on
Madrid Airport, which caused two casualties (this is, in fact, the only way
ETA understands dialogue). After this attack, we are still supposed to believe
that the Government has dropped the negotiations with ETA.
In examining Blue’s version of the events, we observe that, unlike Green and
Red’s version, she appraises the truce quite negatively, even going as far as to
describe it as a ‘plot’ – termed as a conspiracy theory in the previous account –
between the Socialist government and ETA, a plot which, judging from her own
words, could still be unfolding. From this perspective then, the position taken by
the Popular Party throughout the peace process is no longer regarded as a failure
of duty, but rather as a patriotic duty against an immoral agreement. Addition-
ally, Blue is the only subject to explicitly mention the terrorist attack and the two
resulting casualties. Interestingly, her comment on this event, what she referred
to as ETA’s only way of understanding dialogue, alludes to Green’s version in
which the attack was a mere warning. Lastly, it is worth stressing that, according
to this perspective, the very failure of the peace-making process would prove the
uselessness of dialogue, thus reinforcing the Popular Party’s positioning against
the government’s attempt to reach a peace agreement with ETA.
Discussion: comparing the cases

Throughout these three samples we have seen how the way in which participants
thematize the Basque conflict has led to a diverse selection and interpretation
of the documents, yielding different views of the truce period according to dis-
tinct positionings the subjects identify with. Table 5.2 shows the subjects’ the-
matization of the Basque conflict together with their respective positionings. In
observing this table we can note that subjects’ positionings – namely the way they
attribute different rights and duties to the main political actors involved in the
Basque conflict – are implicit in the way they thematize the conflict. This posi-
tion then shapes the way participants remember and narrativize the peace-making
process. Thus, the very act of narrating the peace-making process becomes, itself,
an actuation of identification (Rosa and Blanco, 2007). That is, participants in
the study identify with the positioning of certain political actors involved in the
conflict by justifying their actions in light of a particular attribution of rights and
duties. This is made through an actuation, in this case through the elaboration of
a discourse – the domain in which rights and duties, justifications and accusations
exist. As Bruner (1990) points out, referring to the role of narratives in recount-
ing some polemical episode, they ‘become an instrument for telling not only
what happened but also why it justified the action recounted’ (p. 86). Echoing
John Austin’s book A Plea for Excuses, Bruner goes on to say that ‘a justification
rests on a story of mitigating circumstances’ (p. 86); circumstances that would
give certain actors the right to act in the way they did.
In considering the way subjects recount the peace‐making process from a spe-
cific positioning, we observe that, in the case of Green’s account, ETA’s terrorist
actions become justified in the light of the oppressing circumstances which sur-
round the Basque people. Assuming ETA’s positioning, Green thematizes the con-
flict in such a way that the armed struggle can only be considered a community’s
Table 5.2 Thematization of the Basque Conflict and Subjects’ Positionings
Thematization of the conflict Subject’s positioning

Green Oppression and lack of freedom to Right (and duty?) to fight for the
decide the Basque Country’s own Basque Country independence
future
Red Conflict of interests (with an identity Right (and duty?) to find a dialogued
base) where arms prevail over words way out to the conflict
Blue Problem of violence caused by anti- Right (and duty?) to impede any kind
Spanish sentiments of concession to a terrorist group
Table 5.3 Future Solutions to the Basque Conflict
Future solutions
Green Negotiations involving all political options. Right of Basque citizens to
decide their own future.
Red Change arms for words. Dialogue and consensus among all political parties.
Blue Reinforcement of policing and judicial actuations. Elimination of anti-
Spanish sentiments.
right (perhaps a duty) to defend itself against oppression. As for Red’s account, we
can see how the failure of the Socialist government to achieve peace is mitigated
by ETA’s actions and the disloyal attitude of the Popular Party. Yet, it is precisely
the latter’s attitude which is justified in Blue’s account. Thus, consistent with
the Popular Party’s positioning on this matter, Blue depicts the opposition to
Zapatero’s peace initiative as a legitimate and duty‐bound response to a supposed
secret agreement and a series of intolerable concessions made by the Socialists
to ETA. Conversely, according to Red, dialogue is a necessary right and duty of
every responsible government to explore. Now, if we regard the three versions as a
whole, we can note that they acquire a broader sense within a particular social and
argumentative context, since each version forms part of a broader dialogue main-
tained between multiple positionings on the conflict. As Wertsch (2002) points
out, this implies a hidden dialogism inasmuch as every version of the past consti-
tutes, in one way or another, a response to a competing interpretation of a given
event. Likewise, this applies to the future as well, since, as noted above, the differ-
ent ways of thematizing and remembering conflicts are aimed at paving the way
for justifying alternative resolutions and avenues for future actions (see Table 5.3).
Concluding thoughts
Through this study we have sought to show that remembering does not imply
an independent and de-contextualized faculty located in people’s heads. As said
in the introduction, remembering is an activity distributed between individuals
and those socially and historically inherited cultural artifacts that mediate the way
people (re)construct and give sense to the past (Wagoner and Gillespie, 2014).
Taking up the notion of sign mediation referred above, we have focused on the
meditational role of narratives in the way people remember historical issues and
how such narratives are linked to groups, identities and different positionings.
This has brought to the fore the importance of the context; a context which is
not only physical, but eminently cultural, symbolic, social, and argumentative. In
fact, the plurality of voices that characterizes society, and conflicts in particular,
is what leads individuals and groups to strive for imposing their own interpreta-
tion of the past by means of different narratives and discourses (Brescó and Rosa,
2012). Such discourses – on many occasions supplied through the media by the
very same actors involved in the conflict – represent the set of cultural tools
through which people interpret and represent past events, in this case, the con-
flict between Spain and the Basque Country.
However, this is not to assert that people repeat what they hear in a com-
pletely mechanical way. As Wertsch (1997) remarks, such cultural tools should
not be taken as mechanistically determining consumption. Rather, people enter
a dialogue with discourses that circulates within the symbolic market (Bourdieu,
1991) and, in this way, they reformulate, rebut or even resist their content. This
leads us to consider the biological metaphor of digestion as suggested by Beals
(1998). According to this metaphor, individuals rework the incoming discourses
into their own material, thus giving rise to new ones. This process would take
place on the grounds of individuals’ discursive repertoire – that is, the acquired
symbolic toolkit – which would enable them to work on the incoming material.
As Beals (1998) points out, discourse is both the material we appropriate and the
means by which we appropriate additional discourses. The result is an interwoven
number of voices – a sort of heteroglossia (Wertsch, 2002) – which can eventually
lead to the co‐construction of a new discourse. As Bakhtin (1986) observes, ‘this
experience can be characterized to some degree as the process of assimilation –
more or less creative – of others’ words’ (p. 89).
Yet, such a degree of creativity will vary depending on the individual’s own
resources to establish a dialogue with others’ voices and discourses. Thus, the
lack of necessary symbolic tools will result in a more passive appropriation of
discourses. In such cases individuals will be inclined to take the words of others
and make them their own in a relatively uncritical way. Consequently, they end up
repeating different pre-packed scripts in such a manner that their voices become,
to a certain degree, ventriloquizations of, for example, those conveyed through
the media (Bakhtin, 1981). Such voices, in providing certain forms of interpreta-
tions of the past, also transmit a moral content consisting of a specific attribution
of rights and duties; something that can proleptically impact both the orientation
of an individual’s actions and the way these actions come to be morally justified.
Taking the model proposed by Schank and Abelson (1977), it could be said that
in certain situations individuals would become mere actors attached to different
ready‐made scripts, which, in supplying a story‐line for understanding the con-
flict, also set the plans and goals to be reached in a given context.
There is not a definitive, completed or impartial interpretation of the past.9
Indeed, there are diverse and even opposing ways of remembering and giving
sense to the past, which are dependent upon particular positionings within par-
ticular contexts. Still, we can turn around upon our own versions, and critically
reflect on our positioning so that received scripts can be surpassed and new future
goals can be conceived. In this way, we pass from being actors to become authors
endowed with more agency to interpret and act vis-à-vis certain conflicts. This
reflexive process – which should be socially encouraged, for example, through the
teaching of history in schools – also opens the possibility of conceiving of a more
dynamic and bidirectional relation between context and individuals. Rather than
the former merely providing the cultural resources for remembering, the latter
could also transform such resources in order to promote new forms of interpreting
the past. It also points to the above-mentioned sign mediation processes vis-à-vis
the way individuals and groups use culture – including historical narratives – to
orientate their present actions towards different future goals. In this sense, just as
groups can build monuments to remember historical atrocities in order to avoid
repeating them in the future, so too can they encourage new ways of remembering
conflicts so that new and creative solutions may be imagined.
Notes
1 Psychology began as a kind of cultural science in the nineteenth century with Laza-
rus and Steinthal’s Völkerspsychologie approach. Moritz Lazarus was awarded the
first professorship in psychology for his cultural research.
2 For a discussion of different theories on nationalism see e.g. Smith (2001).
3 As pointed out earlier, the notion of sign mediation is paramount here, since our
relationship to the world, far from being direct, is mediated through different cul-
tural artifacts. As Wertsch (2002) states, ‘to be human is to use the cultural tools, or
mediational means, that are provided by a particular socio‐cultural setting’ (p. 11).
4 Cole (1996) applies the notion of prolepsis to the upbringing insofar as parents’ imag-
ined goals in relation to their offspring guide their educational childrearing, thus
channeling the child’s present towards the parents’ imagined future. In the same
vein, the project of nation building – initially imagined by an élite – became a real-
ity due in large part to the introduction of different symbolic artifacts related to the
very idea of nation, especially history textbooks. Thus, analogous to the upbringing
example, this resulted in guiding the present towards a previously imagined goal.
5 A significant number of people in the Basque Country do not feel part of the Span-
ish nation and would like this region to be an independent country. This scenario is
strongly marked by the presence of the Basque terrorist group ETA. Since its first
terrorist action in 1969 – towards the end of Franco’s dictatorship – this group has
caused nearly 900 casualties – including politicians, civilians and military person-
nel. However, after fifty years of violence, along with some failed peace processes,
ETA has been losing strength in terms of both its operational capacity and social
support. In October of 2011 ETA announced the definitive cessation of its armed
activity. Today the conflict is not definitively solved since the Spanish Government
is waiting for ETA to hand over its arms.
6 The peace process began right after the declaration of a truce by ETA on 22 March
2006. From that moment and throughout the entire process the Spanish right
wing Popular Party has accused the Socialist prime minister (José Luis Rodríguez
Zapatero) of making secret deals with the terrorists and surrendering the country
to ETA. In turn, a large majority in the Basque Country blamed Zapatero for his
lack of audacity to push forward with the process up to its ultimate consequences.
Finally, after nine months of political unrest, the fragile process was destroyed when
ETA planted a bomb in Madrid’s Barajas airport, causing two casualties.
7 All political views were balanced across sources so that all the major views about
the Basque issue were equally represented. The selected sources are: El Mundo
and ABC (center-right newspapers, close to the Popular Party), El País (center-
left newspaper, close to the Socialist Party), Gara (newspaper close to Batasuna –
ETA’s political arm) and La Vanguardia (a Catalan center-right newspaper).
8 Here, it is worth noting that this was not a problem‐solving task, since there is no
single solution to be reached – namely, an exact version of what happened in the
peace-making process – but one aimed at better understanding subjects’ ‘effort
after meaning’ (Bartlett, 1932) when reconstructing the past.
9 This, however, does not imply that anything goes in interpreting the past. There
are clearly constraints on what most would accept as plausible accounts. That is
why Holocaust deniers seem so disingenuous.
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6 Concepts of social context
in memory
Social scientific approaches1
Christian Gudehus
Context – what else?

To suggest and emphasize that the social and societal context should also be con-
sidered when investigating remembrances and memory from the point of view
of the social sciences seems somewhat odd, as this type of context is traditionally
central to these disciplines. Instead, it appears that the integration of experimen-
tal approaches and social contexts, in particular those of the cognitive sciences,
has previously been neglected within the social sciences. Here, I would like to
focus on three aspects of context highlighted by the editors in the Introduction
to this book.
Namely,
1 to consider the functionality of memory and remembrances in the context of

social actions. In these instances, the vantage point chosen here determines
that social functions and abilities of the said remembrances – such as the abil-
ity to strategically use references to the past – are of particular interest;
2 to focus on the conditions that facilitate, establish and form semantic and
episodic memories;
3 and last, but not least, to relate the respective (individual and disciplinary)
research results to those of other disciplines or approaches much more con-
sistently than has previously been done.
I will examine these three dimensions of context featured in memory research by

delineating a number of social scientific research approaches. Some are explicitly
part of memory studies; others are now just finding their way into this field of
research; yet others still wait to be discovered for this purpose.
Tradierungsforschung – researching the transmission

of narratives (of the past)
The German verb tradieren is difficult to translate into English. It is derived
from the noun ‘tradition’ and basically means the handing down or transmis-
sion of different forms of knowledge. In the following, ‘transmission’ will be
Concepts of social context in memory 87
used as an approximation. The term is regularly used when referring to the
transmission of:
• modes of interpersonal interactions, rules and, indeed, also values (how one
should behave, what is considered expedient or appropriate, what is good/
right vs. bad/wrong);
• actions, such as customs or rituals;
• practical know-how, such as the arts of construction or healing;
• explicit knowledge of the past.
This last usage of transmission, i.e. explicit knowledge of the past, at first sight
appears to be the proper object of Tradierungsforschung. Yet, upon closer exami-
nation the transmission of history and stories comprises much more than the
mere transmission of episodes, dates or facts. Simultaneously, interpretations,
structures and certain usages of representations of the past – hence contexts – are
transmitted. Tradierungsforschung is a heuristic concept, a mode of thought and
practice that has evolved as a result and criticism of research with contemporary
witnesses (Zeitzeugenforschung) and oral history/biography in Germany. Consid-
ered from a conceptual point of view, it draws on the theory of memory developed
within social theory and, more prominently, on the research of remembrances
as examined by social psychology. Both fields of research originated in the first
quarter of the twentieth century. Following very different methodological paths
and equally different theoretical paradigms, the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs
(1925) and the (social-) psychologist Frederic Bartlett (1932) almost simultane-
ously reached a strikingly similar conclusion: Individual remembrances, to a con-
siderable degree, depend upon social circumstances. Amongst others, relevant
factors are cultural frames (for example, farmers can remember the patterns of
cows and the prices paid for them better than other, non-specialized people; the
same holds true for architects’ memory of geometrical forms), social and psycho-
logical functionality (narrations that are able to generate meaning, orientation
and coherence) and cultural scripts (modes of narration, plot structures, notions
of plausibility/probability). Following these conclusions, Tradierungsforschung
interprets narratives as constructs bound to (specific) social and temporal con-
texts. It investigates how such narratives are composed, i.e. what is told and how.
Since the late 1990s, a number of German researchers employing the meth-
ods of qualitative social research, especially interviews, have focused on various
aspects of how World War II and National Socialism (NS) are remembered. These
empirical studies were partly published simultaneously and, indeed, follow very
different goals. Gabriele Rosenthal, for instance, analysed how National Socialism
and the Holocaust are discussed within the families of perpetrators and victims
with the aim of examining ‘latent biographical structures of meaning’ (Rosenthal,
1997: 12; translation by J.H.) and, in this context, focused on biographical and
family systemic functions of biographic narrations (Rosenthal, 1999). Nina Leon-
hard, in comparison, was interested primarily in the relation between historical
awareness and political awareness (Leonhard, 2002). Friedhelm Boll investigated
88 Christian Gudehus
the functionality of talking for the formerly persecuted and the implications of
socially favoured modes of narrating the past (Boll, 2003). Michael Kohlstruck
examined the ways in which German men born between 1951 and 1967 relate
to the NS past and the role it plays for identity construction (Kohlstruck, 1997).
Viola Georgi (2003) analysed how young people (aged between 15 and 20)
who live in Germany and have migratory backgrounds related to this period of
time. Harald Welzer and colleagues investigated the way in which the history of
National Socialism and World War II is transmitted within families (Jensen, 2004;
Moller, 2003; Welzer et al., 1997; Welzer, 2005). The concept of Tradierungs-
forschung was forged and its theory and methods developed within this research
context. Welzer and his colleagues combined individual interviews with the family
members of three generations (the generation of those experiencing the time of
National Socialism as well as their children and grandchildren) with group discus-
sions of the whole family. In doing so, on the one hand, the families’ interaction
could be observed while, on the other, the stories narrated in the personal inter-
views could be compared with each other as well as with the family narrations as
a group (for a similar methodology, see Stone et al., 2014). From this method-
ological point of view, the analysis accounts for the fact that all the participants in
the conversations, including the interviewers, contribute communicatively to the
construction of the overall narrative. The hermeneutic dialogue analysis, which is
based on Ulrich Oevermann’s (Oevermann et al., 1979) ‘objective hermeneutic’,
devised in this research context, systematically incorporates the utterances of all
communicating persons in the analysis of the data (Jensen and Welzer, 2003).
Hermeneutic dialogue analysis, now a central method of Tradierungsforschung,
renders it possible to trace the process of ‘mutual production’ (Welzer, 2001a) of
narratives about the past. Accordingly, narratives emerge in different situational
and communicative settings when all people involved in the situation participate –
if to different degrees – in their (re)construction.2 This, by the way, is true even
if they only listen and do not talk themselves; for example, while listening to a
speech, a lecture, a guided tour, an analysis – all established forms of dramatiza-
tion, etc. Another observed effect that clearly illustrates just how much research
results are contextually determined has been labelled ‘cumulative heroisation’
(Welzer, 2001b). This refers to the reinterpretation of, from a current perspec-
tive, problematic narrations/stories told by the generation which lived through
the time of National Socialism and the Holocaust (the Erlebnisgeneration). Such
problematic narrations/stories included instances of anti-Semitism, racism and/
or even crime. In the interviews with their (now adult) children, and especially
with their grandchildren (now in their teens or twenties), these narratives either
go unnoticed or are recast as positive stories of resistance. One important reason
for the existence of this behaviour, which could also be verified by a quantita-
tive survey, is cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). The need to maintain a
positive image of family members – respectively the image of the family members
the speakers want to evoke – can hardly be reconciled with the negative image
of the Nazis as they are represented in all educational and information chan-
nels. It would follow then, that without such dissonance, we should not expect
such reinterpretations on the part of the children and grandchildren. Indeed, in
a study carried out in Switzerland more than a decade later, Burgermeister and
Peter found no such tendencies for such a process of ‘heroisation’ (Burgermeister
and Peter, 2014: 156). Just as is the case with autobiographical narratives, the
reinterpretation on the part of the children and grandchildren is probably not
intended. Rather it is a somehow unintentional process of recasting the past into
a present in order to provide coherence, orientation and meaning.
This reinterpretation of stories according to the needs for meaning and plausi-
bility of those who retell them is central to what is called the transmission process
(Tradierung):
What we call transmission requires the active appropriation of the reported –

i.e., stories that should be transmitted require a point of contact with one’s
own reality [. . .], a narrative form that leaves room for compliments as well
as a narrative situation that, by itself, has the quality of an experience [. . .].
Under these circumstances a narration can be transmitted and can, in the
process, change from someone else’s to one’s own story.
(Welzer et al., 2002a: 35; translated by J.H.)
The repetition of a narrative is, therefore, one indicator of its transmission.

Accordingly, at the root of the matter, the transmission of past events is the
reception of a new, personal, appropriated representation. This also means that
every story about the past simultaneously is the starting point and the end
in a transmission chain. Every story is based on other stories –and not only a
single story. Rather, individual interpretations establish themselves in various
communicative processes and hence are, at least theoretically, open to infinite
modifications. Therefore, every narration serves as a starting point for new
stories. If the latter, i.e. a newly appropriated story, is missing, the chain is
interrupted and nothing is therefore transmitted. This also holds true for rep-
resentations rendered by the generation that experienced National Socialism
and the Holocaust. As the psychological branch of research on remembrance
has indicated, memories are only to some degree based on events that were
personally experienced. Hence, relevant parts of an autobiography are ficti-
tious (Welzer, 2002). Every narrative is based on a multitude of sources that
are assembled in a process taking heed of the communicative requirements of
a situation but also of the respective psychological needs of the speaker (e.g.
creating a narration that depicts the speaker as she sees herself: a clever person
or generally helpless, etc., Pohl, 2010). Because sources might be confused or
forgotten, even the speakers can reshape their own narratives. Furthermore, the
narratives follow dramaturgic patterns that – as the studies by Frederic Bartlett
show – are culture-specific. Narratives are rendered plausible so that they com-
ply with the self-image of the speaker or with the image they have of others and
the respective cultural life-scripts (Fivush, 2008), i.e. the established modes of
narration of, for instance, autobiographies. All these aspects determine what
is remembered and how it is told, retold and thereby transmitted. The studies
by Welzer and colleagues demonstrate the high degree to which stories about
the past are moulded in the form of idealized, yet nonetheless existent, types
of transmission (Tradierungstypen). These are modes of dramatizing the past
that follow established scripts: ‘victimhood’, ‘justification’, ‘dissociation’, ‘fas-
cination’ and ‘heroism’ (Jensen, 2004). They express how the past is moulded
in dialogues. Consequently, interpretations that have often sedimented into
topoi3 and patterns of interpretation are transmitted in the form of sometimes
smaller narratives – for example, consisting merely of a remark – and sometimes
larger narratives that can comprise entire biographies.
As has been shown, research on Tradierungsforschung – just as other approaches
of memory studies that apply methods of qualitative social research – explicitly
and systematically focus on the context in which the past is reconstructed. In
addition to the content (what happened) and structure (how something is told),
the discourse, usage and contextualization of historical references are an integral
part of the Tradierungsforschung: When is the past talked about and in which
way? How is the term ‘Nazi’ applied? When are comparisons expedient and
when are they not? In her study of eastern German public cultures of remem-
brance and family remembrance in the era of National Socialism, Sabine Moller
showed how east Germans in 1999 used this topic as a background for their
narratives about their own experiences. By talking to west German interviewers
they spoke about the history of the GDR which was much more important to
them. Topics were, for example, censorship, social control by organizations such
as the Free German Youth, and the like. These were talked about by referring to
structurally comparable elements of National Socialism – for instance by men-
tioning the youth organization or ‘the Party’ (Moller, 2003). Such contextual-
izations and reference to topoi and patterns of interpretation are combined, as,
for instance, when it is mentioned that history has to be known so that it can be
learned from and so that it will never happen again. The framing in which a topic
is discussed can become more relevant than the original contents (what hap-
pened). In extreme cases, the process of transmitting stories (Tradierung) can
almost completely neglect the content. In these cases, it is not the stories them-
selves which are important but rather the context in which they are transmitted.
The process of transmitting stories (Tradierung) is, therefore, a combination of
elements: the image of an era consisting of a description of events, the labeling
and characterization of the actors (individuals, groups or else collectives or
institutions) including their motivations, causes and reasons to act. These are
complemented by evaluations of the event (it was good, it was bad), interpreta-
tions (what is its meaning) and, finally, the knowledge that the contextualiza-
tion is appropriate as well as expedient and satisfies external third parties, both
concrete and imaginary. All this is forged by linguistic conventions (e.g. plot
structures), cultural scripts (e.g. patterns of interpretation), topoi, and, finally,
pragmatic goals. From this perspective, remembrance is therefore much more
than the contents of particular narratives, and the transmission of narratives is
more than the transfer of stories. Rather, both can be understood as a set of
practices and/or abilities.
Appropriation
The term, or to put it more precisely, the concept of ‘appropriation’ is central
to the empirically grounded theory of Tradierungsforschung. The English verb
‘to transmit’ suggests a process of transfer, as if, for instance, an object would
be handed over. Yet, as a matter of fact, the re-interpretation of stories – but
also, indeed, of objects – is the real research topic. This observation results in
two perspectives of which the first focuses on the process of appropriation itself:
What are the rules, types of logic and routines of appropriation? This question
has just been answered exemplarily above. It is about useful narrations that are
developed with the help of already existent and re-appropriated structures such as
scripts or plot structures. The second perspective refers to the origin of just these
structures that – in the terms of another theory – may also be called frames (Goff-
man, 1974). By focussing on such structures, a whole array of socio-theoretical
considerations comes into sight that will be delineated subsequently with due
conciseness. Prior to this, though, it should be noted that appropriation is not
only a central interest of social scientists of remembrance but also of social sci-
entists in general. Popular concepts such as that of figuration4 (Elias, 2012),
habitus (Bourdieu, 1972), (social) roles or even that of identity may be regarded
as theories of appropriation because in all these cases the individual is placed in
relation to the social and physical world, to groups, institutions, customs, etc.
The social world may consist of group relations, for instance, between estab-
lished and outsiders – a famous example of figurations, which is another concept
describing social factors that frame behaviour (Elias and Scotson, 1965). These
relations may consist of roles that are to be accepted, rejected, or what many
sociologists refer to as – in accordance with Pierre Bourdieu – habitus (Bourdieu,
1976: 170–189; Bourdieu, 1984). Habitus manifests itself in the way in which
people dress, move, speak, or, indeed, think, argue and, ultimately, perceive. It is
a part of socialization. It can be learned, copied or appropriated and is, therefore,
modifiable. The military is one of many instances of socialization that moulds
its members from posture to opinion. It begins with appearances. With a new
haircut, uniform and boots, the recruit, just now a craftsman, civil servant or
student, begins to change. He changes his posture, his gait – also because of his
clothes – and, indeed, his mode of talking. He perceives his environment differ-
ently than before. Other people start to perceive him differently: his comrades,
superiors, family, girlfriend/wife and/or other civilians. Notably, the young
man himself notices that others perceive him differently. Most importantly,
though, he engages in new social relationships and the new rules, norms and
commitments become valid for him. The military makes him a new and differ-
ent person. Simultaneously – and this dialectic is fundamental to understanding
social processes and the relation between individual and institution – the young
man, turned soldier, confirms, modifies or weakens the military institution with
his actions.5 One day, the then not-so-young man, might be a general. He has
belonged to the institution for a long time and, accordingly, is decidedly shaped
by it and by the notions about itself that define it. At the same time, he is then – at
least within the boundaries of its own logic – in a position to change, even to
reform the institution. Consequently, actions are, on the one hand, and to use
the same example, the result of institutional frames. On the other, an individual’s
action plays a fundamental part in the constitution of such frames. It follows then
that while actions are informed by routines, scripts or by figurations, habitus or
other concepts of sedimented experience (a notion that will be explained in more
detail later on), they are also creative (Joas, 1996a, b; Popitz, 2000), reflexive
and idiosyncratic (Lüdtke, 1993). Clemens Kroneberg, a sociologist in favour of
the rational choice approach, differentiates between a reflective-calculating mode
of information processing in contrast to an automatic-spontaneous mode (Krone-
berg, 2011: 145). A similar sentiment was expressed by Joas, whose theoretical
approach differs completely from that of Kroneberg:
Given that the fundamental forms of our capacity for action lie in the
intentional movement of our body in connection with locomotion, object-
manipulation and communication, our world is initially structured according
to these dimensions. We divide the world into categories such as accessible
and inaccessible, familiar and unfamiliar, controllable and uncontrollable,
responsive and unresponsive. If these action-related expectations inherent in
our perception of the world are not met, we do indeed dissociate ourselves
from a part of the world which now surprisingly transpires to be inaccessible
and unfamiliar, uncontrollable or unresponsive, and accord it the status of
an external object.
(Joas, 1996a: 158–159)
‘This means’, Joas argues, ‘that even acts of the utmost creativity assume the
pre-existence of a bedrock of underlying routine actions and external conditions
which are simply taken as given’ (Joas, 1996a: 197).
This underscores the importance of appropriation as an action, a practice.
Accordingly, the activity itself becomes a research focus. In terms of everyday
history (Alltagsgeschichte), in which appropriation has long been a central con-
cept, Alf Lüdtke outlines the following research program: ‘Concisely formulated,
everyday history may be conceived of as the reconstruction of forms of appropria-
tion and practices of appropriation’ (Lüdtke, 1997: 87). Likewise remembrances
must be studied as an action, a performance, a practice of appropriation. If this
approach is adopted, practices cannot be investigated in of themselves, but must
always be examined in their context. ‘Context in this case’, according to Joas, ‘has
the double meaning that, on the one hand, every action takes place in a situation
and, on the other, it presupposes an actor who produces not only these actions’
(Joas, 1996b: 214, translation by J.H.). Therefore, the otherwise often separated
concepts of situation and biography, which are defined by various factors, are
both incorporated into the analysis. The underlying concept of situation should
be correspondingly comprehensive and, hence, include context in the sense that
all layers of the situation have a formative influence on the investigated action
(Gudehus, 2011: 31–32).
Practices
It is, indeed, possible to reconstruct a context through practices. As the soci-
ologist Michael Heinlein illustrates in his study Die Erfindung der Erinnerung.
Deutsche Kriegskindheiten im Gedächtnis der Gegenwart (The invention of rem-
iniscence. German wartime childhoods in the memory of the present) (Heinlein,
2010), these practices are, in the case of the so-called ‘war children’,6 more than
verbal agreements about the past – particularly in interviews. Heinlein shows how
these people were not visible to the public and thus, in turn, not recognized as
a legitimate group. For instance, written autobiographical accounts served as a
starting point for the development of a communicative space of memory (kom-
munikativer Gedächtnisraum) (Heinlein, 2010: 42). Heinlein exemplarily recon-
structs similar functions for exhibitions and conferences. All events or contexts
are understood to be spaces of the acting, communicative and, hence, social con-
struction of, not only narrations but simultaneously the complete and previously
not-formed memory.
The memory of wartime childhoods is, therefore, neither, per se, collective
nor does the memory of the wartime children – meaning the material, medial
and discursive structure related to the remembering of wartime childhoods –
represent an already existing store or a previously established collective mem-
ory. Both the process of remembering wartime childhood in a society and
the structure of the memory of the wartime children as a society shapes
it – and therewith its individuality and collectivity – must be established and
generated.
(Heinlein, 2010: 52–53, translation by J.H.)
The memories of children’s war experiences may have existed in advance,

yet they are lacking a frame within which they could have developed into a
perceptible memory (Heinlein, 2010: 64–65). This frame also enables people
to include themselves in a memory even if they, because of their age, cannot
have the corresponding first-hand autobiographical experience. This is made
possible by the ‘medicalization of memory’ (Heinlein, 2010: 85, translation
by J.H.). By this term, Heinlein means that even those who were distant from
or had only indirect contact with World War II may exhibit severe mental
consequences. The discourse of and on wartime children offers the possibil-
ity to reinterpret one’s own life. Heinlein not only shows how memory is
generated and solidified by practices and thus develops a new frame through
which the past is interpreted, but also emphasizes the importance of the con-
nection between the individual doing the remembering and social practices
of a society.
Heinlein himself calls his approach: ‘practice theoretical’ (praxistheoretisch)
(Heinlein, 2010: 79). In their theoretical elaboration, however, practice theoreti-
cal approaches are more advanced. Not only are the practices themselves the cen-
tral objects of the analysis, they are the actual place of the social. Here the social
represents meaning, relations, actions, interpretation, etc. (Reckwitz, 2002: 252).
Andreas Reckwitz defines practices
as the regular, skilful ‘performance’ of (human) bodies. This holds for modes
of handling certain objects as well as for ‘intellectual’ activities such as talk-
ing, reading or writing. The body is thus not a mere ‘instrument’ which ‘the
agent’ must ‘use’ in order to ‘act’, but the routinized actions are themselves
bodily performances (which does not mean that a practice consists only of
these movements and of nothing more, of course). These bodily activities
then include also routinized mental and emotional activities which are – on
a certain level – bodily, as well.
(Reckwitz, 2002: 252)
The emphasis on routinization seems familiar if the corresponding modes

of decision-making in the various theories of action mentioned above are consid-
ered. Yet, practice theory goes one step further:
For practice theory, social practices are bodily and mental routines. Thus,
mental activities do not appear as individual, but as socially routinized; the
‘individual’ consists in the unique crossing of different mental and bodily
routines ‘in’ one mind/body and in the interpretative treatment of this con-
stellation of ‘crossing’.
(Reckwitz, 2002: 257)
This practice theory can be transferred to the process of remembrance and –

unless a dogmatic stance is taken – may indeed be integrated with approaches
that explicitly belong to memory theories. Accordingly, the sociologist Jeffrey
Olick demands a change of perspective in the research on collective memory that
takes heed of all the aforementioned aspects: ‘To focus on collective memory
as a variety of products and practices is thus to reframe the antagonism between
individualist and collectivist approaches to memory more productively as a matter
of moments in a dynamic process’ (Olick, 2008: 158). Remembering may then
be investigated in its complete scope. This is true only under the condition that a
concept of remembering is devised that considerably exceeds reflexive aspects of
remembering as they, to mention just one example, are more or less strictly advo-
cated by approaches of the sociology of knowledge (Zifonoun, 2011: 192; Berek,
2009: 25). Accordingly, conventional taxonomies include, for example, priming,
‘the higher probability of recognition triggered by previously subconsciously reg-
istered stimuli’, or the procedural memory concerned with motor processes (Mar-
kowitsch and Welzer, 2005: 80–81; translation by J.H.). These types of memory
are especially predestined to be related to practice theoretical suppositions.
Sedimented experiences
Sedimented experiences mean the actual, i.e. action-relevant, effects that events
have on individual and collective action (Gudehus, 2015). They are frames,
patterns, points of reference that organize experience as well as actions and
behaviours, and relate to said experience (Kaiser and Werbick, 2012: 41–42).
How the actors relate to the experience differs in various ways: according to the
rational choice approach these actors are believed to be rationally acting agents
(at least from the personal and hence internally logical perspective) (Esser, 1993),
whereas Hans Joas describes idiosyncratic and creative appropriations. And prac-
tice theory talks about ‘carriers’ of the routinized practices. I have already men-
tioned habitus, that can be described as social personality and that manifests itself,
for example, in tastes influenced by origin and social status, by facial expressions
and conventionalized gestures as well as by attitudes and opinions. Figurations
are similar to habitus and describe social constellations that prefigure modes of
perception and interpretation for members of groups. These concepts could be
complemented by mentality, a concept that is particularly used in the science of
history and that, in principle, describes modes of collective perception and inter-
pretation.7 According to Peter Burke, research on mentality foregrounds collec-
tive instead of individual attitudes, lays emphasis on unconscious assumptions,
investigates the perception of historical actors and engages with the structure
of opinions, categories and symbols (Burke, 1989: 127). Concepts of personal
identity or else those that incorporate social roles – ‘Who I should and want
to be’ – are theories of putting-oneself-into-relation to the requirements and
options of the social world per se.8 Life scripts belong to another category of
sedimented experience. First, in this context, they are of relevance because scripts
play an indispensable part in the theories of action. They may also be interpreted
as automatisms or routines, as in effect such life scripts concern the preforma-
tion of the course of action required for specific situations (Kroneberg, 2011:
121–122; Strauss, 1993: 193), and these do not require any sort of deliberated
decision-making process on the part of the actors. Thus, according to Hartmut
Esser, ‘[f]rames and scripts are mental models of typical situations and sequences
of action, which are stored in the memory, tied to specific contents, focused
on certain aspects, and simplifying the “reality” drastically’ (Esser, 2001: 262).
Second, the concept of life scripts comes from memory researchers from cogni-
tive science, emphasizing the importance of cultural frames and their influence
on both action and the formation and retrieval of autobiographical memories
(Berntsen and Rubin, 2004: 428): ‘the life script is handed down from older gen-
erations, from stories, and from observations of the behavior of other, typically
older, people within the same culture’ (Berntsen and Rubin, 2004: 429). In this
process, signposts are also transmitted as to when, at what age (age norms), and
which stage of development (role transformations) events should occur (Berntsen
and Rubin, 2004: 429). Last, the concept of mental models as developed within
the cognitive sciences should also be mentioned. Mental models, also called situ-
ation models, are related to cognitive framings, but are constituted by personal
experiences, whether in the form of episodic knowledge or more implicitly in the
form of opinions, attitudes or knowledge about the structure and the content of
social relations (Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983). They pre-
form future perceptions, but are ‘not entirely personal. They also have important
social, intersubjective dimensions. Because of earlier interaction and communica-
tion, and more generally due to their socialization, language users have acquired
various kinds of shared knowledge and social beliefs’ (van Dijk, 2009: 6). It is vital
that all these concepts of the framing of perception, interpretation and, eventu-
ally, actions are based on individual and collective (hence culturally mediated)
experiences. They are, therefore, a consequence of events and in the present
change the conditions under which new events are perceived and interpreted.
One example is the genocides of the twentieth century, paradigmatic for the mul-
tiple consequences of complex networks of events and social relationships that by
far exceed definite episodic and semantic memories. These consequences concern
the modification of sedimented experiences themselves.9 The Argentinian sociolo-
gist Daniel Feierstein, for instance, regards genocides to be the intentional destruc-
tion of the social structure of a society (Feierstein, 2014). In turn, the effects of this
type of violence, therefore, dictate the different options for processing and coping
with this violence. Furthermore, the practices of dictatorial power in parts of South
America are in many ways inspired by some of the totalitarian regimes of twentieth-
century Europe. In this way, remembrances are much more than the admonishing
accounting of past injustice, they incorporate the knowledge of the function and
effect of violence. This knowledge is not merely of a technical but also of a social
nature. After the Holocaust, genocidal violence and its uses will always be a con-
tingent option. Accordingly, remembrances also incorporate their own conditions.
This is similar to a point Maurice Halbwachs made in his work (Halbwachs, 1966:
141–144): he not only stressed the connection between remembrances and their
framing, but also already conceived the latter as remembrance in itself (Halbwachs,
1966: 144).10 What is more: ‘Every time we integrate our impressions in the frame
of our present notions, the frame modifies the impression, but the impression in
turn also modifies the frame’ (Halbwachs, 1966: 189; translation by J.H.). This
thought recurs in various theories of remembering, and theories of forgetting, and
thus is evident in arguments which state that every selection of a specific memory
modifies the mechanisms for the next mnemonic selection (Sebald et al., 2011: 15).
And in her considerations of remembrance, even the system theorist Elena Esposito
points out: ‘Memory does not record the past, which would be of no use and would
only be an overload, but reconstructs it every time for a future projected in ever
new ways’ (Esposito, 2008: 185). In short, numerous arguments illustrate that the
contents of remembering cannot be divided from their conditions/framings. Only
the combination of both adequately describes remembrance and memory.
Concluding thoughts
At the beginning I pointed out three dimensions in which context is to be
considered – from my perspective – to be central to the study of remembrance
and memory.
First, the social functions and abilities, such as strategically using references to
the past, were highlighted. This aspect is readily evident in the following:
(a) Tradierungsforschung, as it emphasizes the importance of the communicative

context as much the content of the actual memory being remembered.
(b) Appropriation emphasizes the importance of how actors put themselves into
relation to their social and physical environment by acting. Action becomes
an interpretation of the world. Thus remembering is no longer central, but
is incorporated into a much more fundamental theoretical model.11
(c) Practice theory focuses on routinized physical and mental activities. Accord-
ingly, remembering is to be investigated as a form of practice and, hence,
theoretically facilitates a new conception of remembrance beyond history
and stories. In this context, procedural memory and priming are systemati-
cally integrated into memory studies.
Second, the conditions of semantic and episodic remembrance – I would even

include priming and procedural memory – themselves must be understood as
memories. This was explained in detail with reference to the concept of sedi-
mented experiences.
Third, I pointed out that the focus on the object of investigation, i.e. context –
beyond one’s own discipline, school, method, is fundamental to memory studies.
Memory studies puts social contexts at center stage. In accordance with my goals
as outlined at the beginning of this chapter, I have introduced basic considerations
of a few selected approaches within the social sciences that might be compatible
in other contexts. In particular, they should yield numerous avenues of future
research to understand how and when individuals and groups remember the past.
Notes
1 Translated by Jessica Holste.
2 Interestingly, this research does not refer to debates between discursive and cog-
nitive psychologists which took place in the 1980s, especially in Great Britain,
that discuss the same questions and come to similiar conclusions (Edwards and
Middleton, 1986; Middleton and Edwards, 1990, Middleton and Brown, 2005).
3 Topoi (plural of topos) are words which transport interpretations beyond their
original meaning, like ‘Nazi’.
4 Figuration is a key concept in the work of Norbert Elias and was defined par-
ticularly well in Etablierte und Außenseiter/The Established and the Outsiders
(1990: especially 7–56). Briefly defined: Institutionalized social relationships that
frame actions that are conceived as essential and absolute and that, consequently,
form a fundamental part of individual and collective modes of perception and
interpretation.
5 Pierre Bourdieu – in a very basic fashion and eloquent manner – puts this dialectic
of individual and structure into the following words:
If one ignores the dialectical relationship between the objective structures
and the cognitive and motivating structures which they produce and which
tend to reproduce them, if one forgets that these objective structures are
themselves products of historical practices and are constantly reproduced and
transformed by historical practices whose productive principle is itself the
product of the structures which it consequently tends to reproduce, then one
is condemned to reduce the relationship between the different social agen-
cies (instances), treated as ‘different translations of the same sentence’ – in a
Spinozist metaphor which contains the truth of the objectivist language of
‘articulation’ – to the logical formula enabling any one of them to be derived
from any other.
(Bourdieu, 1972: 83)
6 The expression refers to people who were children at the time (and, in extreme
cases, not yet born) and who consider themselves to be psychologically affected
by the events of World War II.
7 Volker Sellin (1985) provides a useful overview from the perspective of a historian.
8 There are at least as many concepts of identity as there are academic disciplines.
Social psychological definitions are pragmatic. They differentiate analytically
between personal and social identity. Whereas, according to Günter Wiswede, the
former comprises ‘the knowledge of one’s own character features, abilities, opin-
ions including the emotions and evaluations related to them’ (Wiswede, 2004:
245; translated by J.H.). Social identity is defined as ‘the knowledge of belonging
to one or more social groups as well as the emotions and evaluations related to it’
(Wiswede, 2004: 246; translated by J.H.). Finally, ‘social role’ is understood to be
the ‘set of normative expectations that the person in possession of a social position
is confronted with’ (Wiswede, 2004: 462; translated by J.H.).
9 In Gudehus (2015), I discuss further concepts that incorporate sediments in the
context of remembrance in different ways. I argue that, despite all the differences
exhibited by the examples, all are notions that explain how the past in a contin-
ued form remains relevant to action: be it that performative-physical practices are
appropriated and internalized (Connerton, 1989), be it that sign systems, which
have to be identified, are used (Berger and Luckmann, 1966), be it that com-
pletely involuntarily conveyed impairments of actions are at play (Winter, 2006).
10 Oliver Dimbath (2013) elaborates and compares the concepts of framing as devel-
oped by Halbwachs and Goffmann.
11 The same – though upon other terms and with a strong focus on processes of the
construction of meaning – holds true for approaches of the sociology of knowl-
edge (Gudehus, 2014).
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7 Shared beliefs about world
history and cultural context
A theoretical review and a collective-
level analysis1
Darío Páez, Magdalena Bobowik,
James H. Liu, and Nekane Basabe
Scholars have paid considerable attention to lay beliefs and how they affect psy-
chological functioning across diverse domains (e.g. Dweck et al., 1995; Hong
et al., 2001; Moscovici, 1985; 1988; Wagner and Hayes, 2005). These lay beliefs
assimilate and reflect more elaborate types of discourse, including historiographic,
scientific, philosophical or sociological theories exploring the sense of history and
humanity’s existence (Bangerter and Heath, 2004; Jodelet, 2006). Within the
framework of collective memory (i.e. the institutional and long-term hegemonic
common memory of society), the social representations of history refer to the
memory in society or to different images and beliefs about the past that specific
groups share and are related to current needs and social identities (e.g. genera-
tional memories or political groups of historical events and figures, Pennebaker
et al. 1997). Still, in the domain of social representations of world history, only
specific beliefs have been studied, such as the perceptions of concrete historical
events such as World Wars I and II and prominent leaders like Hitler, Stalin,
Gandhi or Mandela (Bobowik et al., 2010; Glowsky et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2009;
2011; Pennebaker et al., 2006; Techio et al., 2010). A dearth of researchers have
examined more general beliefs about history that people draw from in order to
make sense of how and why history unfolds as it does. Thus, the first aim of this
chapter is to address this gap in the literature and present a review of existing
shared beliefs about how world history unfolds across forty different countries.
Still, studying social representations of world history across nations requires a
system- and macro-level approach, with a focus on sociocultural contexts (Bond
and Smith, 1996; László and Wagner, 2003; Schwartz, 2011). The way nations
construct historical memory may depend on socio-cultural contexts including
factors such as the level of social development, the prevalence of cultural values,
etc. Using a set of survey-based data at the national level from countries across
the world, the second aim of this chapter is to explore shared beliefs about world
history in relation to socio-structural and cultural contexts. Finally, we examine
the cross-cultural variability in shared beliefs about world history.
Thus, the aims of this chapter are: (1) to present a theoretical review of lay
beliefs about world history; (2) to examine the relations between shared beliefs
about world history and social development, cultural values, and national pride;
Shared beliefs 103
and (3) to show cross-cultural variability of these beliefs at the national level. In
other words, we will discuss and present data showing how social representations
of history are anchored in socio-cultural contexts and how they orient socio-
psychological processes, such as collective national esteem.
Socio-structural factors and cultural values as antecedents of

shared beliefs about world history
One important aspect of social context is culture. Culture is defined as a set
of shared values, meanings, and behaviors (Schwartz, 2011), which cannot be
adequately understood at the individual level. When examining lay beliefs about
history at the level of a nation, important cultural and socio-structural facets of
the contexts under analysis need to be taken into consideration. For instance,
social (or human) development, defined here using indices of high literacy, life
expectancy, and income (United Nations Development Programme, 2007), may
determine whether people within a society perceive world history through the
lens of modern or post-modern historiographic traditions.
The way people understand power relations within the society and what norms
and goals influence their behavior in front of people of high status (Hofstede,
2001) may also be an important determinant in shaping certain shared beliefs
about world history. In this chapter, we consider (commonly examined in previ-
ous literature and cross-cultural studies) the cultural dimensions inherent in the
structure of any society: (1) power distance, (2) masculinity, (3) individualism-
collectivism, (4) indulgence versus restraint, (5) traditional versus secular-rational
values, and (6) post-materialism. We consider these dimensions to be potentially
relevant determinants of lay beliefs people hold about world history. Below we
define each of these cultural dimensions (see Table 7.1 for a summary).
Power distance (1) expresses the degree to which the less powerful members
of a society accept and expect its unequal distribution. In turn, societies driven
by competition, achievement and success are considered to be masculine (2) in
contrast to feminine societies, which tend to exhibit cooperation, modesty, and
quality of life. Nations high on both the values of power distance and masculinity
may be more likely to emphasize historical narratives glorifying warfare (a strug-
gle over power) and heroism of warriors (powerful, successful male figures). It is
also important to take into consideration prevalent forms of sociability between
the members of a society (3). For example, the extent to which members of a
society ascribe to a more autonomous structure of society (i.e. more individual-
istic) versus a more community structure of society (i.e. more collectivistic) may
have important consequences on the way lay beliefs about world history are orga-
nized (Hofstede, 2001). Another dimension recently proposed by Hofstede et al.
(2010) refers to the level of self-control a culture imposes (4). Indulgent societies
are those in which the citizens of a nation are allowed gratification of basic and
natural human needs related to enjoying life and having fun; restrained societies
suppress gratification of needs and regulate them by means of strict social norms.
Indulgent societies may therefore exhibit different lay beliefs about world history
104 Darío Páez et al.
Table 7.1 Cultural Dimensions: Definitions
Individualism Collectivism
An emphasis on personal autonomy, An emphasis on loyalty and
distinctiveness and voluntary relationships mandatory relationships with few
with large and fuzzy ingroups ascribed ingroups
High power distance Low power distance
An emphasis on respect and deference and Relationships are more symmetrical
acceptance of strong social distance between and social distance between high and
high and low status group members low status group members is weak
Masculinity Femininity
An emphasis on force, courage, and honor An emphasis on cooperation and
and strong differentiation between gender weak differences between male and
roles female social roles
Indulgence Restraint
Relaxed societies with weak norms and Tense societies with strong norms
acceptance of dis-inhibition and an emphasis on social control
and inhibition
Traditional values Secular values
An emphasis on religious beliefs, tradition, An emphasis on secular beliefs and
and vertical authorities modern bureaucratic authorities
Materialism Post-materialism
An emphasis on survival, economic An emphasis on expressive
development, and hard work individualism and quality of life
compared to restrained societies where a greater emphasis is placed on effort,

struggle, and social order.
Similarly, traditional values (in contrast with secular-rational ones) (5) stress
the importance of religion, parent–child ties, deference to authority, and tradi-
tional family values (Inglehart, 2010). Nations with high levels of traditional
values may exhibit more religious and stoic lay beliefs about world history. The
pattern of shared beliefs about world history within a society may also reflect
the endorsement of post-materialistic or materialistic values. Post-materialism or
self-expression values (6) place greater emphasis on social toleration, life satisfac-
tion, public expression, and an aspiration to liberty. Alternatively, materialism
values emphasize a greater desire for fulfillment of material needs (such as secu-
rity, sustenance, and shelter). Importantly, whereas post-materialism is one of
the core values in the modernization process of societies across the world, socio-
economic development related to modernization, and particularly industrializa-
tion, is expected to bring a shift from traditional values to secular-rational ones.
As a consequence, highly developed nations are those which tend to endorse
post-materialistic values, making reference to promoting high subjective well-
being, encouraging tolerance, and trusting other people (Basabe and Ros, 2005;
Inglehart et al., 2004), as well as those with higher levels of secularity.
Shared beliefs 105
Hypotheses
Thus, the main hypothesis of our research is to test an association between social
development, cultural values, and lay beliefs about world history. Briefly, we
expect that societies in development and modernization should agree more with
modern beliefs because they are functional for economic development and the
construction of the nation state. In turn, traditional, collectivistic, high power
distance, and materialistic values should be associated to pre-modern beliefs. It is
important to be aware that this implies an unequal and mixed structure of beliefs
about history.
In what follows, we present the methodology used in our research, and fur-
ther, we review lay beliefs about world history and those held by the citizens in
each country.
Dataset
The dataset (the World History Survey) used in this chapter was collected between
2007 and 2008 from a total of 7,437 university students from forty countries
across six continents (see Liu et al., 2011; Páez et al., 2013 for further details
about procedure and samples; note that the analyses presented in this chapter also
include African countries described in Páez et al., 2013 as well other countries
not analyzed in Liu et al., 2011). Participants were composed primarily of social
science students. For the purposes of this chapter we used aggregate data with
a country being a unit of analysis (i.e. groups of observations for each country
were replaced with a mean score based on the observations for a given country).
Sample sizes ranged from 82 to 352 with a mean sample size of 186 participants.
Mean age per sample was 22.17 and ranged from 19 to 33.8. Finally, mean per-
centage of females per sample oscillated between 26.3 and 88.5 (mean: 61.3).
Measures
Participants were asked to evaluate on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7
(strongly agree) how well eleven statements described the main meaning or the
most important ideas about what causes and structures world history. Candi-
date statements used to measure shared beliefs about world history were drawn
from diverse historiographic or philosophic sources (please see the reference
list for specific sources). All the statements used in our analyses are presented
in Table 7.2.
As for the socio-economic and cultural indices, the Human Development Index
(HDI), calculated using indices of high literacy, life expectancy, and income for
each country, was extracted from the Human Development Report 2007 provided
by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2007). Our indices of
power distance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity, and indulgence-restraint
are taken from Hofstede and colleagues’ work whereby in the 1970s they dis-
tributed questionnaires to IBM employees from fifty-three nations and regions
Table 7.2 Classification of Shared Beliefs about History
Pre-modern beliefs Items Main mechanism Philosophical background Period

1 Religious view History is the result of a superior plan God’s design Theology Ancient and medieval
of a power greater than man. times
2 ‘Great men’ History is the story of great men and Leaders’ acts Legitimization of ruling Ancient times and
view women who change the world. class willpower 19th–20th-century
romanticism (Carlyle)
3 ‘Cycle of History is a cycle that keeps repeating Repetition and History as a cycle and Ancient times and
suffering’ view itself again and again.1 suffering suffering Western 20th century
History is the story of the pain and (Spengler)
suffering of humankind.1
4 Rise-and-fall History is the rise and fall of societies; Repetition History as repetition of Ancient times
view nothing lasts forever.1 the past
Modern beliefs and romanticism
5 Progressive view History is the march of human society Linear progress Positivism, progressivism; 17th–19th century
towards economic progress, greater Focused on positive future
freedom, democracy, equality, and
justice.
6 Lawful view History is a result of the operation of Laws, rules Determinism; Marxism
objective laws of nature.
7 Idiographic There are no laws or general rules Singular events Romanticism together 18th–20th century
view about history. and leaders with hero’s centrality
8 Violence- History is a story of warfare and the Warfare and Political Darwinism; War as
focused view politics of war. states’ action continuation of politics
Post-modern beliefs
9 Technological- History is a story of technological Technological and Post-modernism, end of 20th century–present
scientific view progress and scientific advance.1 scientific advance history
10 Pessimistic History will teach us nothing. No mechanisms Nihilism, pessimism; ‘post-modernism’
view History is a sort of joke. All efforts Focused on present;
lead one to laugh at the comedy of it. Opaque future
Note: 1 These items were lacking data in Germany, Singapore, and Norway.
Shared beliefs 107
(and more recent World Value Survey data in the case of the indulgence-restraint
dimension). The indices of the survival/self-expression or post-materialistic val-
ues and traditional versus secular values were taken from the World Value Sur-
vey (WVS) (Inglehart et al., 2004, waves 2000 and 2006) and are available for
thirty-two nations. In spite of the fact that the surveys were performed decades
ago, both Hofstede’s and Inglehart’s scores show high convergent validity with
current surveys of values and with current cross-cultural studies. For example,
power distance correlates −.60 with Inglehart’s post-materialism (Basabe and
Ros, 2005). It should be noted that four out of the forty countries analyzed in
our study lacked data on Hofstede’s values, six countries lacked Inglehart et al.’s
values, and one country (Taiwan) lacked HDI scores.
The World History Survey also included closed-ended questions concerning
the evaluation and importance of historical leaders and events nominated for the
the top ten in previous qualitative research by two or more cultures (Liu et al.,
2005; 2009). Participants were asked to rate forty world events and forty lead-
ers in terms of their positivity/negativity and importance. Based on two factors
(historical calamities and historical progress) found by Liu et al. (2011), we con-
structed two dimensions concerning participants’ evaluation (1 = negative vs. 7 =
positive) of events: Historical Calamities included the mean evaluations of World
War II, World War I, the Holocaust, use of the atom bomb, the Vietnam War, the
Iraq War, the Cold War, the Great Depression and the Asian Tsunami; Historical
Progress was created as a mean evaluation of the Digital Age, putting a man on
the Moon, the foundation of the European Union and the United Nations, and
the creation/evolution of humanity.
Analyses
In order to examine the relation between shared beliefs about history and the
socio-cultural indices, we calculated correlations adjusted for a country’s female
count and a country’s mean age (some countries were lacking this data). In
order to examine differences between the linear-, scientific-, technology-, and
progress-oriented Western cultures, and collectivistic, cyclical cultures (Asian
countries in particular) we performed non-parametrical analyses of variance
(because of the small national-level sample size within each of the regions).
Based on nations’ scores from the 2005–2007 World Value Survey on dimen-
sions of survival-expression and traditional–secular values, Inglehart and Welzel
(2010) proposed eight cultural zones which have been validated for psycho-
logical variables by Georgas et al. (2004). In line with this, we categorized our
sample of forty countries into the following eight regions: English-speaking
countries (e.g. the USA), Catholic Europe (e.g. Spain), Protestant Europe (e.g.
the Netherlands), ex-communist countries (e.g. Russia), South Asia (e.g. Indo-
nesia), Africa (e.g. Cape Verde), and Latin America (e.g. Brazil). We examined
lay beliefs about world history across all eight of these cultural zones. We carried
out post hoc comparisons with adjusted significance levels. Below we report
only significant post hoc pairwise differences.
Validity of WHS dataset
To test the external validity of our data, the nation-level means of political ideol-
ogy (conservatism) and importance of religion within each of the student samples
were correlated with national means of cultural values based on representative
samples extracted from other world-wide value surveys (Inglehart et al., 2004;
Hofstede, 2001). As we did not have direct measures of values, we used political
ideology and importance of religion as indices of progressive-traditional values
(with left-wing ideology being low and right-wing high in traditional values) and
nationalism, usually related to collectivistic and hierarchical values (see Cohrs
et al., 2005). Importance of religion was negatively related to social development
(r(36) = −.76, p < .001), secular values (r(31) = −.53, p = .002), individualism
(r(33) = −.46, p = .006), and post-materialism (r(29) = −.34, p = .053) and posi-
tively associated with power distance (r(33) = .53, p = .001). Political conserva-
tism (ideology), in turn, was negatively associated with post-materialism (r(29)
= −.59, p < .001) and individualism (r(30) = −.56, p = .001), whereas positively
associated with power distance (r(30) = .37, p = .038). In sum, these results sug-
gest that our dataset is externally valid.
Historiographic traditions as a basis for lay

historiography and their relation to social
development and cultural context
In accordance with social representation theory (e.g. Farr and Moscovici, 1984;
Moscovici and Hewstone, 1983), widespread beliefs often function as ‘scientific
legends’ (e.g. Bangerter and Heath, 2004), namely, beliefs derived from science
that diffuse and stabilize in lay culture (Moscovici, 1992). We can therefore
expect that lay beliefs about history will reflect the historiographic, philosophi-
cal, or sociological theories specific to particular cultures. Thus, through a
review of diverse historiographic traditions, we have selected ideas that we felt
embraced the most relevant, widespread, and distinct beliefs across cultures and
time. Recent reviews of collective memory and cross-cultural historiography
(Iggers et al., 2008) propose three systems of societal beliefs about historicity,
which are not limited to Western cultures. In the old or ancient system, the past
is the most important facet of history and guides the present. The modern sys-
tem, oriented towards the future, depicts history as fueled by progress. Finally,
the post-modern system, embedded in the modernist narrative of decline and
an opaque future, is strongly focused on the present (Delacroix et al., 2010;
Olick et al., 2011). In what follows, we will first review the historiographic and
philosophical traditions that are best captured within the three historiographic
systems and serve as the basis for the construction of lay beliefs. Second, we will
present the findings from the WHS concerning the relation between lay beliefs
about history and socio-cultural factors. All the correlation results are summa-
rized in Table 7.3.
Table 7.3 Means and Correlations between Beliefs about History and Socio-structural and Cultural Indices
Beliefs about M (SD) Human Power Individualism Masculinity Indulgence Traditional- Post- Importance Ideology National
world history Development distance secular materialism of religion pride
Index values
Pre-modern beliefs
Religious view 3.22 (0.75) −.25 .42* –.21 −.05 −.32+ .02 −.40* .64*** .36* .65***
‘Great men’ 4.77 (0.51) −.13 −.04 .09 −.16 .35* −.42* .38* .50** −.22 .09
view
Rise-and-fall 4.86 (0.48) .33* −.30+ .28 .32+ −.37* .41* −.11 −.22 .07 .54***
view
Cyclical view 4.61 (0.27) .17 −.01 .03 −.02 −.25 .12 −.23 .21 .26 .29+
Suffering- 4.11 (0.45) .36* −.30+ .39* .16 −.05 .28 .24 .09 −.13 .44**
focused view
Modern beliefs
Progressive 4.65 (0.57) −.39* .38* −.38* −.50** .08 −.25 −.12 .58*** .30+ .26
view
Lawful view 3.61 (0.68) −.19 .31+ −.19 .13 −.25 −.11 −.34+ .40* .49** .70***
Idiographic 4.16 (0.38) .17 −.04 −.01 .34* −.19 −.04 −.09 −.07 −.17 .26
view
Violence- 3.90 (0.69) .54*** −.30+ .32+ .52** −.23 .19 .05 −.23 .12 .47**
focused view
Post-modern beliefs
Technological- 4.83 (0.33) .00 .04 −.06 −.10 .46** −.44* .26 .32+ .23 .09
scientific view
Pessimistic 1.72 (0.36) .27 .04 −.02 .08 −.48** .27 −.35* −.16 .19 .10
view (teaches
nothing)
Pessimistic 2.21 (0.46) .20 .13 −.31+ .21 −.39* .15 −.45* −.13 .38* .10
view (a joke)
Notes: *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05; +p < .10
Old, pre-modern systems: societal beliefs about the divine
plan, ‘Great men theory’, and cyclical rise and fall
History as the result of a divine plan

Among the oldest attempts to explain history, theologists asserted that the actions
of a God or gods were the ultimate cause of events (Bujarin, 1925/1974). Indeed,
Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions conceived of history as determined by
God’s ‘plan’. Previous research has indicated that strong religiosity is related to tra-
ditional and conformity values cross-culturally and among Christians, Muslims, and
Jews (Sarouglou et al., 2004) and conservative politics and values across seventy-
one nations (Inglehart et al., 2004). Therefore, representations of history based on
belief in a divine plan are expected to be associated with conservative or traditional
values and low social development. The findings of our World History Survey
(WHS) suggest that belief in history as determined by a divine plan was strongly
positively associated at the national level with low post-materialism (r(27) = −.40,
p = .024), high power distance (r(29) = .42, p = .016), and marginally significant
with cultural rigidness (r(29) = −.32, p = .067). This conception of history was also
positively associated with religiosity importance (r(32) = .64, p < .001), conserva-
tive ideology (r(29) = .36, p = .035), and national pride (r(33) = .65, p < .001).
As for cross-cultural differences, secularized Protestant and Catholic Europe, but
also Catholic Latin America, rejected history as the result of a divine plan more –
H(7) = 30.02, p < .001 – than South Asia. Together, with the exception of more
conservative and religious (compared to Europe, for instance) English-speaking
countries, countries who do not ascribe to the ‘divine plan’ system are more devel-
oped, individualistic, less hierarchical, and more indulgent cultures.
History as a result of acts of great men

Following the religious view of history as the product of supernatural entities,
studies of ancient cultures suggest that the powers attributed to these gods may
be transferred to figures at the head of a kingdom or state (Bujarin, 1925/1974).
Great leaders and heroes played a central role in historiography not only in the
ancient era, but also in nineteenth- and twentieth-century nationalistic narratives
of Europe and America (Iggers et al., 2008). For instance, the nineteenth-century
historian Carlyle argued that ‘the history of the world is but the biography of
great men’ (Carlyle, 1888/2013, p. 28). Recent studies suggest that this view of
history can still be found in present cultures (although not in academic historiog-
raphy). For example, among lay people, 33 percent of respondents in eighty-five
nations agreed that a strong leader is a good way of governing (Inglehart et al.,
2004). Also, previous research has indicated that young people in both Asian and
Anglo-Saxon cultures partially believe that history is the product of both great
men and violence (Páez et al., 2008).
The ‘Great men theory’ of history is often embedded in hierarchical values
and contexts endorsing obedience to authorities as well as enhancing masculine
Shared beliefs 111
heroism (Hofstede, 2001; Moscovici, 1985). However, conceiving history as the
acts of great people in the WHS was only moderately positively associated with post-
materialistic (r(27) = .38, p = .034) and traditional values (r(27) = −.42, p = .018)
as well as cultural indulgence (r(29) = .35, p = .048) while being unrelated to hier-
archical values. Still, this view of history was also positively correlated with religious
importance (r(32) = .50, p = .002). The results of cross-cultural comparisons by
means of a Kruskal-Wallis ANOVAS (H(7) = 19.45, p = .007) showed that the
‘Great men theory’ of history, at the descriptive level, was less accepted in Latin
American, ex-communist countries and in Protestant Europe, compared to English-
speaking and South Asian societies (although adjusted post hoc comparisons did
not yield significant differences). These results may stem from historical experiences
with military, fascist, and Stalinist dictatorships. Still, the social representation of his-
tory based on the ‘Great men theory’ was neither associated with more traditional
societies nor authoritarian cultures. One explanation of these findings may be the
type of sample used by the WHS, namely young, educated people and therefore not
representative of a nation’s population more generally. In fact, we found this view to
be positively associated with religiosity and expressive individualism.
History as a cycle of suffering

Needham (1966) suggested that history and time in Eastern cultures are circular
and not linear as in the West. In terms of cyclical views concerning history, lay his-
toriographical beliefs might be based on a widespread religious approach to history
as full of suffering that will be compensated for in life-after-death. In contrast, West-
erners believe that events unfold in a relatively linear fashion, with stable forces pro-
ducing predictable futures (Ji et al., 2001; Nisbett, 2003). However, cyclical beliefs
about history are not absent in Western cultures (Iggers et al., 2008). In addition to
Greek and Roman cultures, the cyclical view can be found in Vico’s conception of
the ‘spiral of history’ or Toynbee’s A Study of History (Fontana, 2000).
Yet, confounding the expected association between traditional values and a
cyclical view of history, the latter was not associated with socio-economic and
cultural indices. A Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA revealed significant cross-cultural dif-
ferences in perceptions of history as a cycle (H(7) = 15.16, p = .034) but adjusted
post hoc comparisons were not significant. In turn, a shared belief in history as
full of suffering was positively associated with individualism (r(29) = .39, p =
.025), social development (r(32) = .36, p = .030), strong national pride (r(33) =
.44, p = .007) and, though marginally, negatively associated with power distance
(r(29) = −.30, p = .095). There were also significant cross-cultural differences
(H(7) = 21.27, p = .003), with English-speaking countries agreeing more with
this conception of history relative to Latin America.
History as the rise and fall of civilizations

Another ancient notion of history emphasizes the ‘rise and fall’ of civilizations
(Breisach, 2006). For instance, the ancient history of China was summarized in
historiography as a succession of dynasties, as a process of emergence, consolida-
tion, and fall of regimes (Iggers et al., 2008). In Western cultures, at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, Spengler’s ‘rise and fall’ philosophy described the
emergence of a strong-willed leader type of government as the next phase after the
fall of democracy (Hobsbawm, 1995). Following this reasoning, the process of a
rise-and-fall political system par la force should be related to high power distance
values, as, in these cultures, cycles of political violence and changes are considered
to be more frequent and natural (Hofstede, 2001). In addition, some authors
assert that this belief is more prevalent in Eastern compared to Western cultures.
Results from the WHS indicated that a rise-and-fall view was positively associ-
ated with a country’s secular values (r(25) = .41, p = .026), masculinity (r(27)
= .32, p = .075), and rigidness (r(27) = −.37, p = .043) and, above all, national
pride (r(30) = .54, p = .001) but not power distance. Conceptions of history as
describing the rise and fall of civilizations appear then to be anchored or driven by
competition, achievement, and success combined with a high level of control and
patriotism. Also, a Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA revealed significant cross-cultural dif-
ferences in terms of perceptions of history as the rise and fall of civilizations (H(7)
= 20.62, p = .004). However, results disconfirmed the idea that pre-modern
rise-and-fall beliefs are limited to Eastern cultures as both Eastern (Confucian
and South Asian) and Western cultures (Anglo-Saxon countries, Protestants, and
ex-communist Europe) subscribed more to the rise-and-fall view compared to
Latin America or Africa (although post hoc comparisons were not significant).
Together, these results suggest that the belief that history is the rise and fall of
civilizations is not limited to cultures such as India and China, but extends to
Western cultures as well (Hofstede, 2001). Moreover, the rise-and-fall position is
positively associated with developed and individualistic nations, including Anglo-
Saxon cultures. This probably reflects modern worries about the ecological and
social limits of economic growth (Inglehart et al., 2004).
Modern systems and romanticism: progress and violence
Linear progressive narratives

A trend in historiography during the seventeenth-century European Enlighten-
ment movement was the rejection of supernatural interventions and a greater
focus on causal scientific explanations with the idea that humanity is moving
towards a better future (Dupre, 1998). This linear sense of time and history
is also apparent in the eighteenth-century philosophes’ idea of human progress,
nineteenth-century concepts of social evolution towards liberal societies, and
contemporary ideas of developed versus developing nations (Hobsbawn, 1997;
Needham, 1966). This conception of history has also been related to the idea of
economic progress (Fontana, 2000), such as Marxist ideas about the importance
of socio-economic laws in the unfolding of history (Fontana, 2000; Hobsbawm,
1997; Judt, 2005).
Importantly, Western historians and philosophers linked the idea of progress
to a Eurocentric view of history and Western values. Both Hegel and Marx
Shared beliefs 113
argued that Eastern nations such as India did not possess historical conscious-
ness, i.e. they had no clear concept of history, low collective memory, and a
permanent focus on the present (Iggers et al., 2008). Also, a progressive and
lawful conception of history might be positively associated with ideologies and
values stressing the importance of authority and materialistic values. One argu-
ment for such a hypothesis stems from the fact that Stalinism and Maoism united
a deterministic and lawful view of history with a cult of personality related to
hierarchical values and emphasis on obedience (Judt, 2005). Nowadays, beliefs
associated with progress and effort, such as the ‘Protestant work ethic’, char-
acterize materialistic, collectivistic, and high power distance cultures (Furnham
et al., 1993; Inglehart et al., 2004; Leung and Bond, 2004). Using a thirty-
nation sample, Liu et al. (2011) observed that non-Western societies evaluated
progressive events more positively than Western societies did. Under conditions
of modernization, societies centered on survival and hierarchical values tend to
ascribe more relevance to progress, sharing a competitive view of inter-group
relations (Cohrs et al., 2005).
In our WHS, viewing history as a march towards progress positively correlated
with low social development (r(32) = −.39, p = .020), power distance (r(29) =
.38, p = .030), low individualism (r(29) = −.38, p = .029), the importance of
religion (r(32) = .58, p < .001) and ideology, though, marginally (r(30) = .30,
p = .080), and femininity (r(29) = −.50, p = .003). In turn, a lawful view of his-
tory was, marginally, positively associated with power distance (r(29) = .31, p =
.083), materialistic values (r(27) = −.34, p = .064), and also with religion impor-
tance (r(32) = .40, p = .014), conservative ideology (r(30) = .49, p = .004), and
strongly with national pride (r(33) = .70, p < .001). As for cross-cultural differ-
ences, we found that South Asian cultures were more likely to agree with a lawful
view of history than Protestant and Catholic Europe and Latin America (H(7)
= 26.45, p < .001). In turn, there were no cross-cultural differences in terms of
a progressive view of history. These results suggest that a progressive and linear
view of history is not necessarily typical of Western cultures (Nisbett, 2003).
Contradicting the hypothesis concerning the differences between Eastern and
Western cultures (Braithwite and Scott, 1991), both Western and Eastern (and
also African and Latin American) cultures believed that progress is the main fac-
tor driving history, supporting Iggers et al.’s (2008) assertion that belief in tech-
nology and linear time is a modern fabrication and widely shared across cultures.
All together, a lawful-progressive view of history relates above all to low social
development and low power distance values. Also, materialistic (with a strong
nationalist outlook) cultures emphasize a lawful view of history whereas collectiv-
istic and feminine (with strong religiosity) cultures endorse beliefs about history
as driven by progress (although our datasets are not representative of each nation
or culture as a whole).
Romantic violence-based narratives

In opposition to progressive and lawful views of history, nineteenth-century
historians developed a hermeneutical approach based on German idealistic
philosophy, which rejected the principle of causality in history, denied that laws
ruled history, and concentrated on idiographic descriptions, with an empha-
sis on the role of war and violence (Fontana, 2000). Social Darwinism also
appeared in nineteenth-century European thinking. Spencer and others used
Darwin’s biological ideas to support their arguments that a violent struggle
among races and differing nations led the strongest and most able nations to
rule the world (Iggers et al., 2008). The idea of history unfolding as a result of
violence, social conflict, and revolution was also a central feature of Marxism
(Marx and Engels, 1974), where war and violence are believed to be indispens-
able tools for social change.
Wars are actually the principal component of most social representations of
history. Because extreme and negative events like wars are better remembered
than positive ones (Baumeister et al., 2001), the role of political violence in world
history is especially salient in historical narratives and historical memories. Also,
wars make good narratives, with a causal beginning, an exciting plot, characters
that one can identify with, and an ending of moral significance (Liu and László,
2007). All these factors make wars more memorable.
Indeed, previous research suggests that violence is a main factor in shaping
many nations’ current official and institutional history, historical education, and
informal/popular images of the past and/or collective memories. Revolutions
and war-related events were found to be more salient than other types of his-
torical events (Liu et al., 2005; 2009). Warfare and collective violence accounted
for 48 percent of events nominated as important whereas 45 percent of leaders
named were known for their roles in wars and other events of collective violence.
The hegemony of politics and war in the recall of individuals asked to remember
important events and leaders suggests that lay people have a naïve theory of his-
tory, positing that great things (states) come out of great suffering and that war
and the actions of political leaders are central to progress. Still, in studies based
on closed-ended questions, war and politically related events were not perceived
as more important than socio-economic trends but at least as equally or even
less important than progress-related events (Bobowik et al., 2010; Techio et al.,
2010). In a similar vein, Inglehart and colleagues (2004) found that a substantial
minority (12 percent in eighty-five nations) believed revolutions created social
change.
As for the relations between violence-based views of history and culture,
European Western societies maintain values which are critical of past wars and
socio-political violence and, therefore, are at odds with the post-materialistic
values endorsed within these societies (although Anglo-Saxon individualism
does not necessarily share this disenchanted view of collective violence), and
this ‘sensitizes’ them to a view of history as the product of violence. In turn,
materialistic, non-Western and less developed societies may have a nationalistic
outlook and may, therefore, evaluate past wars less negatively and diminish the
role of violence in history. Our analyses showed that high social development
(r(32) = .54, p =.001) and individualism (marginally) (r(29) = .32, p = .065)
and low power distance (r(29) = −.30, p = .088) were positively associated with
Shared beliefs 115
a violence-focused narrative of history. These results show that less developed
and high power distance societies agree less with the conception of history as
ruled by violence and support Liu and colleagues’ findings that Asian, African
and to some extent Latin American societies evaluated a cross-cultural factor
of ‘Historical Calamities’ (e.g. World War I and World War II, the Holocaust,
or use of the the atom bombing) much less negatively than Western societies
did (Liu et al., 2011). This less negative evaluation of past collective violence
in some cultural contexts fits well with Inglehart and Welzel’s (2010) cross-
cultural dimension of survival versus self-expression. Non-Western societies
perceive past socio-political violence (i.e. Historical Calamities) as more of
the process of survival and progress. Alternatively, Western societies (with the
exception of Anglo-Saxon cultures) see them as something horrible. Indeed,
English-speaking countries agreed more with violence as the driving force
of history relative to Latin American and African countries, whereas Asian
countries agreed more compared to Africa (H(7) = 28.65, p < .001). In turn,
nations did not differ in their perception of history as unlawful. Also, an expla-
nation of Anglo-Saxon nations’ agreement with history as violence is related
to the prevalence of cultural masculinity in these nations. In fact, masculinity
values (r(29) = .52, p = .002) and national pride (r(33) = .47, p = .004) were
positively associated with violence-based beliefs. Masculinity (but not other
values) was also positively associated with unlawful views of history (r(29) =
.34, p = .049). This result is important because it suggests that ‘masculine’
cultures, emphasizing force and personal hardiness, share a violent and chaotic
view of history.
Post-modern systems: history as technological progress

versus history as meaningless
Technology-oriented futuristic narratives

The technology-oriented futuristic narratives emphasize the ‘end of history’ as
in Francis Fukuyama’s book (Fukuyama, 1992), viewing historical conflicts and
wars as ‘an old affair’ (Judt, 2005). Economic theoreticians such as Rostow in his
work, The Stages of Economic Growth, emphasized the idea of scientific modern-
ization and technological development as a main causal factor of history. Provid-
ing support for the prevalence of these beliefs, 54 percent of respondents from
eighty-five nations in the WVS agreed that scientific advances help humankind
(Inglehart et al., 2004). Also, previous research suggests that Americans endorse
these beliefs more strongly than Koreans and followers of Buddhism (Braith-
waite and Scott, 1991). This suggests that traditional cultures may disagree as to
whether the meaning of history is simply a result of scientific progress. However,
Iggers et al. (2008) assert that beliefs based on progress, technology, and linear
time are modern and widely shared in all cultures. Providing support for Iggers
et al.’s (2008) assertion, agreement with technology-and-science oriented beliefs
did not differ across cultural regions under study, neither was it associated with
power distance, collectivism, or post-materialism. However, cultural indulgence
(r(27) = .46, p = .009) and traditional values (r(25) = −.44, p = .018), as well as
religion importance, though marginally, (r(30) = .32, p = .064) were positively
related to post-modern beliefs centred on technological and scientific progress.
These findings suggest that in high-indulgent societies (such as English-speaking
but also some Latin American or Scandinavian countries) the impact of new tech-
nologies on younger generations (our samples) may be an important factor to
consider.
Pessimistic or critical narratives

In the post-modern system, against a technology-oriented view of history, there
is also a critical or pessimistic view of history. This was relatively popular in the
twentieth century after catastrophes such as World War II and the Holocaust
(Dower, 1999; Judt, 2005). In the period after the 1960s, a critical view of
modernization emerged. It criticized linear development culminating in West-
ernization and rejected a view of India, Africa, and other non-Western cul-
tures as ahistorical (Iggers et al., 2008). At the end of the twentieth century
‘post-modern’ thinkers posited that after Auschwitz there were no valid meta-
narratives of history. According to this post-modern, pessimistic, and critical
perspective, history is meaningless, a joke, a farce, and teaches nothing. Mod-
ernization is rejected as a failure, industrialization does not produce democ-
ratization, and globalization fails to reduce poverty while increasing social
inequality between and within nations (Iggers et al, 2008). This incredulity
towards ideologies of universal progress (Breisach, 2006) is hypothesized to
be more prevalent among expressive individualistic, post-materialistic cultures
(Inglehart et al., 2004).
However, this hypothesis was not supported by our results. Rather, materi-
alistic values were positively associated with the perception of history as a joke
and as teaching nothing (history as a joke: r(27) = −.45, p = .012 and history as
teaching nothing: r(27) = −.35, p = .053, respectively) as well as cultural rigid-
ness (r(29) = −.39, p = .029 with history as joke and r(29) = −.48, p = .005, with
history as teaching nothing), which does characterize societies with a tendency
toward cynicism and pessimism (Hofstede et al., 2010). Additionally, conserva-
tive ideology (r(30) = .38, p = .027) and negatively individualism (marginally)
(r(29) = −.31, p = .077) were positively associated with the view that history is a
joke. Africa and Protestant Europe further opposed the idea that history is a joke
in comparison to the Confucian Asian region (H(7) = 17.95, p = .012), whereas
all the cultural regions mostly disagreed with and did not differ in the perception
of history as teaching nothing. It is interesting, however, that beliefs which view
history as a joke and as teaching nothing, or an ‘ironic’ attitude towards his-
tory were not typical of ‘post-materialist’ societies. The nihilistic view of history
appears as a minoritarian view, being probably reduced to an elite of ‘alienated
and melancholic’ post-modern critical intellectuals – at least as some authors pro-
pose (see, e.g., Seligman, 2002).
Shared beliefs 117
Which beliefs about world history are central
and what does it mean?
We also examined the average scores of the participants’ acceptance of particular
lay beliefs about history. Based on the examination of descriptive data (mean
scores were above the theoretical midpoint of 4 on a scale from 1 to 7), national
aggregated scores indicated that participants of the WHS exhibited a moderate
degree of support for the belief that history is related to progress (M = 4.65),
scientific and technological development (M = 4.83), the result of acts of ‘great
people’ (M = 4.77), an eternal cycle (M = 4.61), the rise and fall of civilizations
(M = 4.86) and full of pain and suffering (M = 4.11) relative to the idea of history
being subject to objective laws (M = 3.61) and expressing a superior plan (M =
3.22), and particularly, the beliefs that history is a joke or a farce (M = 2.21) and
teaches nothing (M = 1.72) (all paired t-test greater than 3 and p <.05), which
were mainly rejected. Importantly, shared beliefs about history as determined by
a superior plan (r(33) = .66, p < .001), objective laws (r(33) = .60, p < .001),
progress (r(33) = .45, p = .005), and scientific advancement (r(30) = .38, p =
.027) were all associated with more positive evaluations of historical calamities.
These descriptive results suggest that forty different cultures endorse a positivistic
belief in social progress and scientific development but they also share a lawful
and religious representation of history. Also, this prevalent ‘modern’ view of his-
tory combines with ‘mythical’ representations of cycles and leaders. Importantly,
endorsement of the religious view of history is weaker than the ‘Great men’ and
cyclical views of history. Also, as a result of social evolutionism, nations across
the globe, for the most part, reject existentialism or meaninglessness as the main
message of history. In support of this, pessimistic views of history as a joke and
as teaching nothing were associated with negative evaluation of progress-related
historical events (r(33) = −32, p = .056 and r(33) = −.58, p < .001, respectively)
and the view that history is ruled by no laws and violence (r(33) = −.44, p = .006
and r(33) = −.65, p < .001, respectively).
General discussion
The purpose of this chapter was to explore lay beliefs about world history, to
demonstrate their relation to socio-economic and cultural determinants, and to
examine their cross-cultural variability. As usual in cross-cultural studies, we used
nation states as proxies for cultural syndromes. It is important to be aware that
nations are culturally heterogeneous and that a more refined analysis could be
performed with more specific data on beliefs, values and social and ethnic groups.
For instance, working-class individuals are more materialistic and collectivistic in
all nations, and a class perspective in future research could add interesting insights.
Universal components of social representations of memory

First, the findings of this study suggest that throughout forty countries (among
young people) there exists a collective hegemonic representation of history,
supporting the idea of a globalized, unified world culture, a shared view of his-
tory in terms of technological and scientific development as well as economical
linear progress – at least in educated fractions of the world population. Skeptical
post-modern beliefs are largely rejected, showing the limited impact of nihilist
postmodern ideologies on lay people as well as the lack of long-term impact of
negative historical experience in the case of European and Asian nations that
experienced wars and social catastrophes. However, a cyclical conception of his-
tory is also important across nations around the world, showing an inclusion of
a more balanced view of history in the current world culture, overcoming sim-
plistic progressivism.
Modernization contexts: belief in progress and

a ‘divine plan’ in history
Still, showing the influence of different socio-cultural contexts on social repre-
sentations of history, less developed, materialistic, collectivistic, and hierarchical
nations reported a more positive progressive view of history (Hofstede, 2001;
Inglehart et al., 2004). Globally, these findings suggest an emphasis on progress
among nations in development – an important change in the distribution of his-
torical optimism. A progressive view of history is a hallmark of modernity and has
been a more common outlook over the past 200 years of modernization than dur-
ing previous periods (Zerubavel, 2003). Notably, these positivistic beliefs blend
with religious views of history endorsed in hierarchical and collectivistic cultures,
revealing a process of cultural ‘creolization’ that produces a mixture of positiv-
ism with praise for God. Our results are congruent with the so-called paradox of
modernization in Latin America and some nations of South Asia, where industri-
alization, urbanization, and changes from traditional and survival values toward
more self-expressive and developed values do not necessarily imply secularization.
These findings are of special relevance because globalization, in the sense
of hegemonic representations of history, did not simply mean convergence of
a ‘modern’ view of history, but a complex and unequal development of social
representations as a function of socio-cultural and socio-structural contexts, in
which beliefs in progress did not imply secularization. That is, a lawful and pro-
gressive view of history – mixed with religious (deterministic) beliefs – is more
dominant in more conservative, nationalistic, and developing cultures than in
more developed ones. In these contexts, religiosity, at least as a belief, appears
to increase simultaneously with modernization (Berger, 2001; Romero, 2009).
One explanation is that cultural contexts where a religious understanding of his-
tory and survival values prevails are prone to resilience for the good of their own
nation and progress. Some modern beliefs of history, such as progress and lawful-
ness, are also associated with the ‘Protestant work ethic’ and/or the centrality of
work, which currently characterizes nations undergoing the process of industri-
alization and economic development. These views of history are also associated
with a religious understanding of history (a minority in our educated sample but
hegemonic in the world). This suggests that at the present time, these positivistic
Shared beliefs 119
beliefs play the role of factors supporting the effort of modernization, or that in
developing contexts faith in historical progress helps build the nation and rein-
forces economic growth, as it has occurred in the past in the Western developed
contexts. The process of modernization fuels these representations of history,
mixing supra-natural and social order with a progressive view.
Still, these findings could be perceived as at odds with previous evidence sug-
gesting that individualistic contexts, as opposed to collectivistic and traditional
ones, tend to have a more positive view of history and to be more future- and
goal-focused in the service of economic capitalism and development (Boniwell
and Zimbardo, 2004). However, both our results and hitherto research suggest
that the trend towards modernization enhances a positive view of social evolution
in developing nations, in particular, industrializing nations such as Brazil, India,
or China, which emphasize the materialistic values of economic development,
mastery and work (Schwartz, 1999). It is important to note that this positive
attitude to progress as a main factor in humankind’s history is strongly stressed
in our study in developing and, at the same, hierarchical nations who probably
endorse competition, performance, and effort.
Post-modernization contexts: critical historical memory

In contrast, more developed, post-industrial societies maintain a disillusioned
view of history, associated with ‘post-materialistic’ and/or individualistic expres-
sive values – not only in our research but also in studies with more representative
samples (Smith et al., 2006). More technologically and economically developed
societies stress past suffering and violence in history (Ornauer et al., 1976). This
pessimistic view of historical evolution prevails in developed societies probably
because they are aware of the negative side effects of technological develop-
ment (Galtung, 2006) and feel that they have exhausted the program of eco-
nomic modernization and that the future does not bring clear and challenging
goals. This trend may be reinforced by the current crisis in Europe and by the
socio-economic evolution of growing inequalities and fewer stable jobs. Another
explanation may be that people in developed nations perceive that some chal-
lenges are uncertain and unclear, like the environmental crisis. Paradoxically,
developing nations are following the modernization program developed by
nations that are now disillusioned by it and are therefore beginning to address
the environmental crisis.
Concluding thoughts
Depending on the socio-cultural context, people draw from different representa-
tions of world history in order to make sense of how and why history unfolds as
it does. In developing contexts in the process of modernization, characterized by
strong collectivism and an emphasis on social hierarchy and materialistic goals of
economic development, historical understanding is built upon progress and reli-
gious determinism, which serve the function of justifying the sacrifice and effort
of the society for achieving development. In turn, in developed, post-modern
contexts, the price (violence, power struggles and suffering as its consequence)
paid for development and access to resources makes people further disagree with
the modern progressive meaning of history. These findings provide an interesting
starting point for future research and theoretical considerations of the two-phase
emergence of shared beliefs about history parallel to the process of moderniza-
tion of societies. Still, a crucial message of this chapter should be that positivistic
beliefs about history emphasized in modernization-phase contexts may have their
dark side in spite of their optimistic outlook: they serve to justify violence as
well as inequality in the struggle for development and power in the geo-political
world arena.
Note
1 This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant
numbers PSI2008-02689/PSIC PSI2011-26315); and the University of the Basque
Country (grant number IT-666-13).
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Part III
Cognitive linguistics and

philosophical perspectives
8 Contextualizing embodied
remembering
Autobiographical narratives and
multimodal communication
Lucas M. Bietti
Autobiographical remembering: memories, narratives

and bodily resources
Autobiographical memory is a complex concept that attempts to capture the
long-term and developmental functionality of human memory experience in
everyday life. Autobiographical memory is an integration of features and con-
tents from long-term memory systems – episodic memory, semantic memory
and procedural memory (Berntsen and Rubin 2012; Conway 2005; Conway
and Pleydell-Pearce 2000; Welzer and Markowitsch 2005). In functional terms,
autobiographical memory operates by integrating beliefs and expectations from
long-term memory systems (Welzer and Markowitsch 2005). Episodic memory
(e.g. Tulving 2002) guides the processes by which human beings define them-
selves and assign meaning to the world. From the here and now, episodic memory
enables us to reconstruct and re-encounter autobiographical experiences which
have occurred throughout the course of our lives. As a result of these episodic
remembering processes, human beings are able to compare past experiences with
present ones and project themselves into the future by making predictions and
inferences that are extremely useful for anticipating possible outcomes of future
experiences (e.g. Welzer and Markowitsch, 2005).
Recent research suggests that episodic remembering is driven by embodied cog-
nitive mechanisms (e.g. Casasanto and Dijkstra 2010; Dijkstra et al. 2007). Several
studies on autobiographical memory and embodied cognition (Glenberg 1997;
Rubin 2006; Sutton and Williamson 2014) have claimed that individual represen-
tations of past experiences are formed by the interplay of multimodal components
merging the coordination of kinesthetic, visual, auditory, haptic, spatial, affective
and linguistic memory traces. Thus, the reconstruction of a memory ‘involves
simulating its multimodal components together’ (Barsalou 2008, p. 623). None-
theless, these embodied simulations do not occur in a vacuum. Autobiographi-
cal remembering is also a situated activity in spatio-temporally localized events
embedded in social and material environments (e.g. remembering my last visit to
Rome in a family conversation around the dinner table).
Narratives based on personal experiences are one of the most widespread cul-
tural, cognitive and linguistic resources used to construct, communicate, and
transform autobiographical memories (Pasupathi 2001; Skowronski and Walker
128 Lucas M. Bietti
2004). Autobiographical narratives must be considered as verbal elaborations
based on conscious remembrances of self-experience (Schmidt 2008). They also
play a crucial role in social interactions (e.g. Pasupathi 2003). People usually use
their past experiences in order to both begin and cement new human relation-
ships (e.g. social bonding), and to accomplish particular social goals (e.g. creating
a feeling of connection and intimacy with partners). In the community, narrative
skills create the conditions for the construction of a collective version of reality:
Narrative skills are the abilities to sequence events, to create a cohesive text
through the use of explicit linguistic markers, to use precise vocabulary, to
convey ideas without extralinguistic support, to understand cause-effect rela-
tionships, and to structure the narration along the lines of universal story
schemata that aid the listener in comprehending the tale.
(Paul and Smith 1993, p. 592)
Story or narrative schemata are cognitive and cultural resources for construct-
ing autobiographical narratives (Bruner 1990; Wertsch 2002). Individuals acquire
narrative schemata during their socialization within specific cultural settings
(Schmidt 2008). In developmental terms, narrative skills play a central role in the
emergence of autobiographical memory capacities, which are developed during
the latter part of the preschool years (see, e.g., Nelson and Fivush 2004). The
parents or caregivers figure heavily in this process, in particular, when children are
around 3½ years of age. Nelson and Fivush (2004) argued that this period of early
childhood is when adults generally start to talk with children about their memo-
ries. These authors maintain that the ways in which adults talk about past experi-
ences with their children directly influences how children subsequently structure
their autobiographical narratives in the future. The emergence of autobiographical
memories generates the grounds for the creation of a self-history that is unique
to the self and distinct from self-histories of others (Nelson 2003). The meaning-
function of autobiographical narratives (e.g. Bruner 1990; 2008) stems from their
use in trying to understand life-events as systematically related.
However, most of the research examining the reconstructive nature of auto-
biographical memories via narratives within conversations all has at least one
important limitation: investigations of autobiographical remembering in conver-
sations have based their findings on the systematic analysis of verbal behavior,
leaving the entire embodied dimension of autobiographical remembering aside.
The aim of this chapter, then, is to introduce an embodied perspective, with an
emphasis on gestures, to the ways in which context influences autobiographical
remembering in naturalistic conversations. A better understanding of the embod-
ied nature of autobiographical remembering in conversations is crucial as, for
example, Kendon (1986) points out with regard to the critical role gesticulation
plays in everyday communication:
I believe gesticulation arises as an integral part of an individual’s communi-

cative effort and that, furthermore, it has a direct role to play in this process.
Contextualizing embodied remembering 129
Gesticulation is often an important component of the utterance unit pro-
duced, in the sense that the utterance unit cannot be fully comprehended
unless its gestural component is taken into consideration. In many instances
it can be shown that the gesticulatory component has a complementary
relationship to what is encoded in words, so that the full significance of
the utterance can only be grasped if both words and gesture are taken into
account.
(Kendon 1986, p. 12, emphasis in original)
The use of gesture, as a behavior taking place in front of the speaker, is one
behavior which speakers can more easily pay visual attention to and control.
Research on gestures (e.g. McNeill 1992) has shown that the rate of gesturing
by the speaker is much higher than that of those listening (Bavelas et al. 2008;
McNeill 1992). And while although these studies have primarily focused on ges-
turing while speaking in general, and not specifically on how autobiographical
memories are communicated in conversation, there is no reason to believe that
speakers would behave differently when the topic of discourse is their personal
and past experiences. Some embodied behaviors that occur during autobiograph-
ical remembering in conversational contexts, such as posture and gaze, are inher-
ent behaviors of speakers and listeners, and, therefore, are naturally obligatory.
Speech-linked gestures (e.g. McNeill 1992) are required with certain deictic and
demonstrative expressions (e.g. ‘I want the one over there’) but can be optional
with other types of utterances.
Gesturing while speaking improves performance in simultaneous memoriza-
tion tasks (Goldin-Meadow et al. 2001; Stevanoni and Salmon 2005). Deictic
gesturing (e.g. hand-pointing) allows speakers to establish the focus of visual
attention on sources of relevant information (e.g. pictures), thereby externally
grounding their individual and shared memories. Representational gestures,
alternatively, may be deployed for aiding autobiographical memory retrieval, but
can also be used communicatively, as to evoke a shared conception of a particular
feature of an event among interlocutors. Representational gestures bear a mean-
ingful relation to the semantic content of the speech they accompany (e.g. Becvar
et al. 2005).
In this chapter I aim to provide the grounds for a new perspective on the study
of context in autobiographical remembering, which accounts for the mutual
interdependencies between cognitive, linguistic and bodily resources during
autobiographical remembering in conversations. In order to do so, I will provide
a micro-qualitative analysis integrating the use of verbal and co-verbal resources
while an individual (participant N) remembers a specific, autobiographical epi-
sode in four different contexts of remembering over an eight-week period. By
episode, I mean coherent stretches of discourse about the same topic (Ji 2002;
van Dijk 1981) that are formed by coherent sequences of events described in
topics and actions in which the self plays a central role. In my analysis, I report
how changes in the autobiographical narrative of the same episode are correlated
to changes in the use of bodily resources. Furthermore, I demonstrate that in the
130 Lucas M. Bietti
sections in which the autobiographical narratives remained stable across contexts,
so did the use of bodily resources when describing those events. After present-
ing an analysis of how four different contexts of remembering influenced the
embodied communication of a similar autobiographical episode, I compare the
ways in which narrative structure and associated bodily behaviors change over
time depending upon the context.
Remembering in conversation: An ecological approach

Conversations, in general, but also non-directive interviews, are a natural way for
speakers to reconstruct and communicate their individual and shared memories
(Bietti 2012; 2014; Hirst and Echterhoff 2012; Middleton and Brown 2005). In
non-directive interviews, by means of a non-judgmental stance and active listen-
ing, the interviewer creates the conditions for the interviewee to communicate
his/her attitudes and feelings. The significance is that in non-directive interviews
the interviewee is responsible for setting the terms and parameters of the com-
municative situation (Briggs 1986; Lee 2011).
The four conversation extracts presented below demonstrate some of the
embodied features that are inherent to autobiographical remembering in
conversations and non-directive interviews. Due to the micro-qualitative
perspective adopted for the analysis, the four extracts are from four different
remembering sessions taken from the same group of participants, not from
different groups: (i) two group sessions that consisted of four participants
and an interviewer; and (ii) two individual sessions that consisted of one of
the four participants that was part of the group sessions and an interviewer.
These sessions were recorded over a two-month period between August and
October 2011 in Buenos Aires. The data analyzed for this study forms part of
a larger data sample of a project on individual and collaborative remembering
in multimodal interactions among families and close friends. Group sessions
and individual interviews were structured to follow some of the features of
ordinary conversations in order to be more ecologically valid. These features
include: (i) make the interview situation familiar/comfortable for the inter-
viewee; (ii) conduct the interview in his/her space; (iii) act like a real person,
not as a researcher; (iv) do not consult a written list of questions; (v) try to
approximate ordinary conversation; (vi) show interest; and (vii) let the inter-
viewee show/tell you what is important and then ask him/her about that. This
approach allows for a fuller picture of the participants’ everyday linguistic and
cultural practices (e.g. Briggs 1986).
Specifically, the group sessions and individual interviews from which the ana-
lyzed examples were taken were conducted in the TV room of the home of one
of the four participants, being more in accordance with the settings in which
they might often engage in collaborative remembering. Group sessions were
recorded with two digital video cameras (Canon LEGRIA HF M46 and Sony
Mobile HD Snap Camera MHS-TS20) placed in different corners of the room.
Individual interviews were recorded with a single video camera placed in front
of the interviewee. The audio and video recordings were transcribed in detail
with the help of specialized software (Inqscribe, and ChronoViZ; see Fouse et al.
2011). Audio recordings were transcribed following the Jefferson Transcription
System1 (Jefferson 2004).
The criteria for inclusion in the study was that the participants had to have
gone through a shared event together (e.g. vacations they had spent together as
a group), that they were close friends and that they had artifacts (e.g. pictures,
souvenirs, etc.) related to the shared episode. Each participant took part in the
following four contexts of remembering, in order: (i) group session with arti-
facts (C1); (ii) individual session without artifacts (C2); (iii) individual session
with artifacts (C3); and (iv) group session without artifacts (C4). There was a
delay of two weeks between sessions. This order was motivated by the fact that
it was necessary to have the shared reconstruction of the events with artifacts
first (C1) because this would serve as a baseline to compare how similar epi-
sodes were retold in the three subsequent contexts of remembering. Addition-
ally, it was assumed that having the artifacts in C1 would create opportunities
for the participants to focus on similar aspects of the events being told, leading
me to the belief that C1 would create the optimal conditions for collaborative
recall, considering the fact that they were shared events and the participants
had the pictures in front of them. By watching and listening to the video and
audio recording of C1, I had the opportunity to keep track and take notes
on which topics and episodes were more salient than others by looking at the
participants’ degree of engagement during the group session with the artifacts
(e.g. in terms of the duration of the episodes being told, the rate of interactivity
measured by the speed of exchange in speech turns across participants, as well
as the degree of emotional engagement). The interviewer used these notes as
prompts whenever there were gaps in the conversations in the remaining three
contexts of remembering. The order of the contexts of remembering C2, C3
and C4 was not motivated by research purposes, only by pragmatic ones, e.g.
availability of the participants and setting. This order disregarded the possible
influence of rehearsal effects that may have facilitated recall across contexts of
remembering. Further studies in more controlled settings will have to address
this important issue.
For the group conversations, participants were asked to collaboratively recall
the shared episodes with and without the artifacts related to those shared epi-
sodes (C1 and C4, respectively). Although this naturalistic method did not
allow one to quantitatively measure the costs and benefits of individual vs.
collaborative remembering (see, e.g., Harris et al. 2011) or whether artifacts
facilitate or inhibit recall (e.g. Zhang and Wang 2009), this approach consti-
tutes a first step towards a better understanding of how embodied and social
contexts qualitatively shape the way individuals and groups remember during
their everyday lives (e.g. real-life experiences with friends and family members,
at home, etc.).
The autobiographical episode I analyze in this chapter was taken from the
experience and remembrance of a group of close friends. This group was made up
132 Lucas M. Bietti
of four participants: A (born 1989); N (b. 1988); T (b. 1988) and S (b. 1990).
These friends held a conversation about a summer vacation they spent together
in a seaside town 400km from Buenos Aires in January 2009. One week prior
to C1, the research assistant who acted as interviewer (F) in the four contexts
of remembering, asked the participants to look for and bring artifacts related to
their summer vacation in 2009. A few days later, one of the participants contacted
the research assistant to inform him that they would be bringing the pictures they
had taken during their trip.
How social contexts of remembering alter autobiographical

narratives
Each of the four extracts analyzed below corresponds to a different session. The
autobiographical episode selected for this chapter was about how a club belong-
ing to one of the friends (N) was broken by another friend (Sacha), who was not
one of the four participants in the present research group. The Oxford English
Dictionary Online (2014) defines ‘club’ as ‘a heavy stick with a thick end, used
as a weapon’. In the context of the autobiographical episode, the primary func-
tion of the club was to hit the car tires to check their pressure. The order of the
episodes that I present in the analyses corresponds to the chronological order in
which the four sessions occurred (C1, C2, C3 and C4, see above). Each of the
sessions described here differed in terms of the number of participants (group:
C1 and C4 vs. individual: C2 and C3), interactional space (having the pictures:
C1 and C3 vs. not having the pictures: C2 and C4) as well as the history of previ-
ous interactions about the same episode (for C2, C3, and C4). The pictures relat-
ing to the autobiographical episode about the broken club, and how it happened,
were taken by the group participants themselves.
The aim of the analyses is to describe and explain how these complementary
remembering contexts, on the same topic-related autobiographical episode (how
the club was broken), influences the structure of autobiographical narratives, tak-
ing into account both the verbal and co-verbal (e.g. manual gesture) features of
such narratives. As participant N was the owner of the club, he was the dominant
narrator and led the discussion. However, in both group sessions (C1 and C4),
other participants collaborated with N in narrating the specific episode. In the
individual sessions (C2 and C3), the research assistant, who acted as the inter-
viewer, formulated a few questions in order to help cue the participants’ recall.
Figure 8.1 shows the structure and duration of the autobiographical episode
about the broken club in the four sessions.
The original versions in Spanish are followed by English translations. Mul-
timodal annotations of deictic and non-deictic gestures (e.g. representational
gestures) in relation to the duration of speech were highlighted. I also noted
changes in eye-gaze direction and body posture when relevant. Videoclips of
the four contexts of remembering analyzed can be found at: www.routledge.
com/9780415741224
Figure 8.1 Structure and Duration of the Autobiographical Episode across Contexts
of Remembering
C1: Group remembering with artifacts

In the first context of remembering, participant N introduced the autobiographi-
cal episode (how the club was broken) in response to the vacation pictures.
[00:00:00.09]
1. N: = Era era un palo para ver si las gomas del auto
= It was it was a club to check if the tires of the car
2. estaban estaban desinfladas >pero yo lo había envuelto
were were flat >but I had wrapped up it
3. todo en >como estaba medio quebrado lo había envuelto en
all in >as it was half broken I had wrapped it in
4. cinta y: Sacha (.) que es este amigo grandote que
tape a:nd Sacha (.) who is this really big that
134 Lucas M. Bietti
5. aspira a ser fisicoculturista este: le empezó a pegar el

(**********************)
aspires to be bodybuilder we:ll he began to hit the club
(*****************)
N changes gaze direction towards F
6. el palo contra la arena y se terminó rompiendo del todo

(-------------------------------
the club against the sand and ended by breaking it at all
(-------------------------------
N begins crossing arms
7. y ahí yo diciendo “no no lo puedo creer” porque lo tenía
---------------------------------------------------------
and there I saying "no, I can‘t believe it because I had it
---------------------------------------------------------
8. hace un montón °ese palo°
-------------------------
for such a long time °that club°
--------------------------------
[00:00:22.06]
9. S: >Y nosotros estábamos todos re locos mientras [hacíamos
---------------------------------------------------------
˃ And we were all very crazy while [we did
---------------------------------------------------------
10. una secuencia de fotos<
-----------------------
a photo sequence<
-----------------
11. (Laughter)
----------
12. porque realidad hay todo una:=
------------------------------
because actually there’s a whole=
---------------------------------
[00:00:27.17]
13. N: = Hay [una secuencia
-------------------
= There’s [a sequence
-------------------
[00:00:28.11]
14. S: [Una secuencia
---------------
[A sequence.
------------)
N ends crossing arms
[00:00:29.04]
15. N: Son dos o tres fotos que muestran
There are two or three pictures that show
[00:00:30.07]
16. S: Todo
Everything
[00:00:31.10]
17. N: Todo el momento de Sacha pegándole a la a la arena y yo
The whole moment of Sacha hitting against the sand and I
18. después diciendo “no:”(.)
then me saying “no:” (.)
[00:00:37.21]
19. S: °Sí:° estuvo buena esa noche
(--------------------------
°Ye:s° that night was good
(------------------------
N begins crossing arms
[00:00:39.04]
20. A: Estuvo buena
------------
It was good
-----------
[00:00:39.21]
21. N: Sí: estuvo buena.
----------------
Ye:s it was good.
-----------------)
N continues crossing arms.
In the first two lines (1–2), N introduced the autobiographical episode. Here
he mentioned the function of the club. The introduction of the club along with its
function was supported through several manual gestures (video clip C1: 00:00.2–
00:01.6). First, while introducing the episode and presenting the object, N used
a manual gesture to describe the shape of the club (C1: 00:00.2–00:00.7). The
movement and position of his hands used in the gesture began with both hands
grasped on the handle, one on top of the other, and ends with N’s right hand
moving upwards. N’s hand placement (i.e. a full-handed grasping gesture), as
well as the distance between the positions of his hands signaled both the thick-
ness and length of the club. After introducing the club in the group interaction,
N explained its primary function; in doing so, he employed a manual gesture to
demonstrate an action, that is, how the club was used to check whether the tires
of the car were sufficiently inflated (C1: 00.01.6). N’s embodied demonstration
of the function of the club was accompanied by another manual gesture showing
the shape of the car tires (C1: 00:03.4). Next, N introduces the condition of the
club (L. 2–4). While doing so, he first performed a manual gesture using both
hands with extended index fingers to signal the fact that he had bound the club
136 Lucas M. Bietti
in tape (C1: 00:04.9). The coordinated motion of both extended index fingers
clearly illustrated N’s action of binding up the club with tape. N’s embodied
demonstration of wrapping up the club with tape was interrupted when he clari-
fied that the club was half broken (C1: 00:05.7).
The autobiographical episode continued with the introduction of the actor
who was responsible for breaking the club (L. 4). The friend who broke the club
was not one of the members of the group who participated in the study. Thus, he
was not part of the interactional space (Mondada 2009). According to Mondada
(2009), ‘interactional spaces are actively and constantly shaped and sustained by
the participants’ bodies, glances and gestures during the interaction’ (p. 1979).
While introducing their friend and main actor in the episode, whose nickname
is ‘Sacha’, N leaned forward and pointed at the picture placed on the table (C1:
00:10.1). N’s presentation of the actor responsible for breaking the club was fol-
lowed by an explanation of Sacha’s personal goals (L. 5). Sacha’s personal goals
(to become a bodybuilder) were relevant to the events being remembered by N
in the group session. In contrast to the rest of the participants in the group, the
interviewer did not know of this significant aspiration of the friend who broke
the club. At this stage, and while still pointing at the picture, N redirected his
eye-gaze towards the interviewer (C1: 00:13.1). Thus, N made clear that the
principal addressee of his narrative was the interviewer and not the other partici-
pants in the group, that is, his friends who may remember the episode and know
who Sacha was. N’s gaze towards the interviewer was a bodily resource to check
the degree of attention shown by him or, in other words, whether the interviewer
was following with his gaze the ‘directing-to’ action provoked by the pointing
gesture to the picture that depicted Sacha. By ‘directing-to’, I refer to an action
in which ‘speakers try to move the addressees’ attention to [an] object’ (Clark
2003, p. 248).
In lines 5 and 6, N explained how Sacha broke the club, while he simulated
grasping the club with his right hand and hitting it against a hard surface repeat-
edly (C1: 00:15.0 and 00:31.8). In the interactional space, the table where the
pictures and other objects were placed served as a surrogate hard surface for the
sand mentioned in the description of the events. N’s demonstration of the actions
of how Sacha broke the club was followed by his reaction (L. 7–8). However,
N’s reaction, that is, when he dealt with the fact that his club was broken, was
not accompanied by co-speech manual gestures. In line 8, N briefly mentioned
that the club had belonged to him, N, for a long time, but he did not go into
this further.
From lines 9 to 16, participants N and S talked about a sequence of photo-
graphs that showed the events unfolding in relation to the autobiographical epi-
sode. The repetition of lexical items in lines 9–16 (e.g. secuencia/(‘sequence’);
fotos/(‘pictures’); todo/(‘all’)) along with the collaborative co-construction of
utterances in lines 12–14 (Ford et al. 2002; Lerner 1991; 2004) between N
and S, led N to mention the breaking of the club again (L. 17, C1: 00:31.8 and
00:33.0). N’s description of the episode was accompanied by manual gestures,
similar to those he made in lines 5–6. Interestingly, N’s second demonstration
of how the club was broken was more forceful than the first one, as it involved
postural swings that were absent when these specific actions were mentioned for
the first time. Furthermore, N’s reaction was seen in how he held his head in his
hands looking down (L. 18, C1: 00:35.8). This embodied demonstration of N’s
reaction was absent when he mentioned the breaking for the first time (L. 7).
N’s embodied demonstration may reveal something about the way in which his
autobiographical memories are stored, and how these memories are linked to
perceptual and motor states (Hostetter and Alibali 2008). If we take this into
account, it seems to be the case that the first time that N recalled the action
(L. 6–7) may have had a priming effect that facilitated the reconstruction of an
embodied simulation associated with his reaction after seeing the club broken in
line 18 (holding hands and leaning forward).
Finally, from lines 19–21, we notice a positive evaluation of N’s autobio-
graphical narrative. The agreement on the episode’s evaluation was grounded in
the repeated use of syntactic structures (e.g. estuvo buena/‘it was good’). Such
agreements on how amusing and memorable the episode was, were temporally
synchronized with N’s arm crossing (C1: 00:36.7). N’s body position at the
end of the narration of the episode and the change in the speaker’s speech turn
(L. 19) presented similarities to another sequence that elapses between the end
of presentation of the main action (L. 6) and N’s taking the floor again (L. 15).
Concretely, in both cases it seems to be the case that N’s arms crossing marked
the end of his role as dominant narrator (L. 6 and L. 19).
C2: Individual remembering without artifacts

Next (C2), participant N retells the autobiographical episode (how the club was
broken) in an interview session unaided by the pictures, which acted as external
cues in C1. C2 occurred fourteen days after C1.
[00:00:00.28]
1. Interviewer: >¿Ese fue el día del palo?<
>That was the day of the club?<
[00:00:01.16]
2. N: Sí
Yes
[00:00:02.08]
3. Interviewer: >(.) Del cuento del palo<
>(.) The story of the club<
[00:00:03.23]
4. N: Ese fue el momento del palo
That was the moment of the club
[00:00:04.23]
5. Interviewer: °>¿Cómo era? ¿Quién estaba?
°>What was it like? Who was there?
6. >¿De quién era el palo ese?<°
>Who did the club belong to?<°
138 Lucas M. Bietti
[00:00:08.05]
7. N: No: era mío (.) era un palo
No: it was mine (.) this club was
8. que era para chequear las ruedas del auto (.)
for checking the car’s tires
9. pero era un palo viejo viste
but it was an old club, you get that
10. ant- como era para chequear las gomas de los
ol- like to check the tires of the (.)
11. colectivos (.) y yo le tenía y yo lo tenía ahí
buses (.) and had it and I had it there
12. en el auto, que estaba todo
in the car, this club was all
13. roto el palo, que estaba como
broken, it was like already
14. medio ya fisurado y mi amigo
half cracked and my friend
15. Sacha, lo agarró y lo terminó
Sacha took it and he finished
16. de romper, y yo dije “no: una reliquia familiar”
breaking it and I said “no: it’s a family relic”
17. (Laughter)
18. (.2)
19. N: Porque mi: porque mi bisabuelo era dueño de una
Because my: because my great grandfather was the owner of a
20. línea de colectivos
of a firm of buses
21. (Laugther)
22. N: Entonces, me había quedado ahí y yo lo tenía como ahí reliquia
Then it stayed there and I had it as a relic
[00:00:40.26]
23. Interviewer: Era la herencia, la herencia del abuelo
It was the inheritance, the grandfather’s inheritance
[00:00:42.16]
24. N: Igual ya estaba todo roto (.) ya estaba fisurado y le había
But it was already broken (.) already cracked and I had
25. puesto una cinta alrededor
put a tape round it
26. para que para que no se termine de romper del todo >pero
put a tape round it so that it didn’t break completely >but
27. bueno este amigo mío que es muy grandote tiene mucha fuerza<
this friend of mine who is very stocky, is really strong<
28. (Laughter)
[00:00:54.02]
29. Interviewer: °¿Pero qué? ¿Era un palo de madera?°
°What? It was a wooden club?°
[00:00:55.02]
30. N: Era un palo de madera macizo viste (.)
[**********************]
It was a solid wood club, get it(.)
[**********************]
N changes gaze direction towards the interviewer
31. era: de e:sos (.) no sé (.)
it was of those (.) I don’t know (.)
32. tenían como las hendiduras como para agarrarlo todo,
it had like a grip like to have a good hold it all,
33. estaba bueno
it was nice
[00:01:04.29]
34. Interviewer: °Pero lo: pero lo mató°
°But he, he killed it°
[00:01:06.28]
35. N: Sí encima le empezó,
Yes, and what’s more he started it
36. porque le empezó a pegar así
because he started to hit him like this
37. contra la arena de la playa y:
against the sand on the beach and
38. y se terminó de romper ahí (.)
and it ended up getting broken there.
In the first lines of C2 (L. 1, 3, 5 and 6), the interviewer prompted N to

re-narrate the autobiographical episode (how the club was broken) discussed at
C1. The interviewer formulated three questions that acted as reminders (Bietti 2013;
Bietti and Galiana Castelló 2013) during the interview session (L. 1, 5 and 6).
Asking these questions about that specific episode was based on how it had come
up in the first group session (C1). Additionally, as there was a lack of external
memory aids (i.e. pictures) driving the narrative of the episode, the interviewer
played a more active role during C2 than in C1. (The important role that pictures
play as external memory aids goes beyond the scope of this paper, but for relevant
studies with healthy and clinical populations, see van den Hoven et al. 2012;
Hodges et al. 2011, respectively.)
In response to the interviewer’s prompts, N began to reconstruct the autobio-
graphical episode in line 7. The episode started by introducing the object (L. 7,
video clip C2: 00:08.4) and explaining its function (L. 8, C2: 00:10.2). The
introduction of the object co-occured with a two-handed manual gesture (con-
tracted hands) making clear its shape, in terms of size and thickness. The func-
tion of the club was demonstrated when N gesturally showed how to use it to
check the car tires. In the next line (L. 9), N briefly introduced the condition
140 Lucas M. Bietti
of the club, and while doing so, he made a manual gesture by moving his right
hand towards his back (C2: 00:11.9), over and behind his shoulder. Such bodily
behavior temporally synchronized with the attribute viejo (‘old’), the word N
used to illustrate the state of the club, is in accordance with a spatial metaphor for
chronology found in Western cultures, which places the future ahead of oneself
and the past behind (Casasanto and Jasmin 2012; Núñez and Sweetser 2006).
Thus, the attribute viejo (‘old’) is located behind his back.
In lines 10–11, N further elaborated on the function of the club by bringing
in new information regarding the type of vehicle tire that it was used to check
(C2: 00:14.7). In doing so, he performed a similar manual gesture to the one
he did 4.5 seconds before. Right after providing further details about the type of
tire that the club was used to check, N added an element of the autobiographi-
cal episode that he did not mention in C1. N demonstrated the location of the
club in his car by re-using the two-handed manual gesture he had employed
when introducing the object and telling the interviewer about its function (L.
11–12 and 22). However, when introducing the storage place of the club, N’s
manual gesture presented a slight variation: as we can observe in C2: 00:19.2 and
00:38.2, when N talked about its location, he used extended open hands, not
contracted as when he explained its function.
In the next three lines (L. 12–14), N further elaborated on the state of the club
(C2: 00:22.6). The manual gesture that corresponds to this further elaboration
shows N grasping the club with his right hand (contracted hand) and tracing a diag-
onal line downwards with his left hand fully open. This further elaboration of the
state of the club was followed by the main action, that is, how his friend broke the
club thumping it on the sand (L. 15–16). At this point, N simulated grasping the club
with his right hand and hitting it against a hard surface repeatedly (C2: 00:24.7).
Right after demonstrating how his friend broke the club, came his reaction (L. 16).
N’s reaction was bodily manifested in another manual gesture using both hands
(C2: 00:26.8). In the next line, N referred again to the location of the club but this
time using only a deictic adverb ahí (‘there’) without mentioning the car. Although
he did not explicitly refer to the car, he employed a similar two-handed manual
gesture (C2: 00:38.7) compared to what he did 19.5 seconds before (C2: 00:19.2)
when first talking about where the club had been inside the car.
After the interviewer’s intervention in line 23, N referred back to the state of
the club, and added the fact he had wrapped up the club with tape (L. 24–25).
While doing so, he first performed a two-handed manual gesture (contracted
hands and fingers). His right hand seemed to be holding the club whereas his left
hand simulated the motion involved in binding the club with tape. After demon-
strating how he bound up the club with tape, N explained why he decided to do
so (L. 26). The addition of new characteristics of the friend who broke the club
was followed by further elaboration of the club’s state (L. 27). However, the act
of adding these extra details about the person responsible for breaking the club
was not associated with any specific gesture.
In line 29, the interviewer provided another prompt, aimed at obtaining
further information about the condition of the club. In response, N provided
additional details about the club’s state (L. 30–33), during which he performed
the same two-handed manual gesture (contracted fingers) as he had done when
introducing the object (C2: 00:8.4) and explaining its function (C2: 00:14.7).
N’s change in the direction of his eye-gaze towards the interviewer reflected the
fact that he was fulfilling the interviewer’s request to add further information
about the state of the club.
The autobiographical episode ended with a new narrative description of how
the club was broken by his friend (L. 35–37) that was temporally coordinated
with an embodied simulation of how his friend hit the club against a hard surface.
Compared to the first time N demonstrated how Sacha broke the club, this new
simulation included changes in body position (leaning forward) as he now made
a beating imitation against the floor which was meant to represent the sand, that
is, the hard surface the club was originally hit against.
C3: Individual remembering with artifacts

Two weeks after C2, participant N reconstructed the autobiographical episode
(how the club was broken) in an interview session with the pictures that had
acted as external cues in the session C1.
[00:00:01.27]
1. N: Que decidimos bajar, ir a la
We decided to go down, go to
2. playa a ver el amanecer y
the beach to see the sun come up and
3. terminamos sacándonos esta
we ended up taking this
4. foto (.) jodiendo con el palo °ese°
photo (.) fucking about with this club °this one°
5. (Laughter)
[00:00:08.08]
6. Interviewer: >¿De dónde había salido el palo °ese°?<
>¿Where did you get the club from °this one°?<
[00:00:09.29]
7. N: E: Lo tenía (.) e:ra mío que:
A:h I had it (.) it wa:s mine tha:t
8. era como una reliquia familiar
it was like a family relic
9. >¿no sé si te acordás que te conté  ?=
[**********************]
>I don’t know if you remember that I told you ?=
[*************************]
N changes gaze direction towards interviewer
[00:00:17.16]
10. Interviewer: =A: Sí=
=A:h Yes=
142 Lucas M. Bietti
[00:00:18.10]
11. N: =Que era para cheque:ar
=It was for checki:ng
12. las gomas de los colectivos (.) sí
the tires on the collective buses (.) yes
[00:00:20.11]
13. Interviewer: Pobre palo
Poor club
[00:00:22.28]
14. N: Pobre palo ya fue (.) pasó a la historia.
(########)
Poor club, it’s gone (.) went down in history.
(########)
N shrugs.
From line 1 to 4, participant N introduced the events that ocurred before the
autobiographical episode. Thus, he connected the break of the club in temporal
(e.g. during sunset) and spatial (e.g. at the beach) contexts with previous events
and provided information about how he and his friends ended up playing around
with the club. The addition of these details may have been the result of a rehearsal
effect (e.g. Naveh-Benjamin and Jonides 1985), if we take into account the fact
that in C3, N had already told the same autobiographical episode twice. In line 3,
N presented the episode by selecting two out of the five pictures that were placed
on the table and placing them to one side in front of him. One of these photo-
graphs is the picture that shows the club before being broken. Subsequently, N
referred to the club by using a deictic pronoum ese (‘that’), which was temporally
synchronized with the pointing gesture (L. 4, C3: 00:07.3).
In the next line, the interviewer prompted N to reconstruct the narrative
(L. 6). The interviewer’s question led N to begin to talk about the origin of the
club (L. 7–8). While doing so, N performed a manual gesture temporally syn-
chronized with the possessive pronoun mío (‘mine’) but which did not seem to
fit with any particular feature of the club (e.g. thickness and size). Next (L. 9),
N redirected his gaze toward the interviewer while addressing a question to him
which presupposed that N had already told the autobiographical episode on pre-
vious occasions to the interviewer (C3: 00:13.9). N’s question in line 9 implies
that memories of that specific episode were shared with the interviewer to some
extent. Hence, there was no need for N to provide further details about it.
N’s eye-gaze was a bodily resource that provoked a response from the listener
in the interaction (Rossano et al. 2009; Stivers and Rossano 2012). N’s eye-gaze
reinforced the accountability of the interviewer as he responded to his question
and confirmed that the memories of the episode (how the club was broken)
were shared to some degree (L. 10). Several scholars (e.g. Goodwin 1987; 1994;
Kendon 1990) have documented the regulatory function of the speaker’s gaze
in social interactions. Moreover, in experimental settings, it has been shown that
‘the listener tended to respond when the speakers looked at him or her’ (Bavelas
et al. 2002, p. 576), providing compelling evidence that collaborative activities in
face-to-face interactions are not only driven by verbal resources, but also bodily
resources, for example eye-gaze.
In lines 11–12, N explains the function of the club while gesturally dem-
onstrating how to use it for checking the car tires (C3: 00:17.5). N’s embod-
ied explanation of the function of the club was followed by the interviewer’s
evaluation in the next line (L. 13). In the line that follows, N agreed with the
interviewer’s evaluation by repeating lexical items pobre palo (‘poor club’). N’s
reaction to the breaking of the club ya fue (‘it’s gone’) was simultaneously
aligned with a two-handed manual gesture while crossing his arms. N’s manual
gesture with crossed arms was temporally synchronized with shoulder shrugs.
His embodied reaction ended the narrative reconstruction of the autobiographi-
cal episode.
C4: Group remembering without artifacts

In the fourth context of remembering, the group of friends had to collaboratively
recall without the pictures used in sessions C1 and C3.
[00:00:00.13]
1. A: Sacha (había) roto el palo
(********************)
Sacha (had) broken the club
(********************)
A directs eye-gaze towards where N is seated
[00:00:01.15]
2. T: (Disculpe) (Suena el teléfono celular de T)
(Sorry) (T’s cell phone rings)
3. (Laughter)
[00:00:02.13]
4. N: [Sí] (.) Sacha había roto el palo (.2) 
[Yes] (.) Sacha had broken the club (.2) 
[00:00:04.06]
5. A: >Nos sacamos la foto des[pué:s<
>We took the photo of ourselves af[te:r<
Participant A introduced the episode (how the club was broken). In this
context of remembering the episode began directly with the main action,
which was the breaking of the club, and there was no reference to how the par-
ticipants ended up on the beach playing with it. Participant A reconstructed
the main action while performing a manual gesture and gazing towards where
N and T were seated (L. 1). However, due to the angle of the video cameras,
I am not in a position to claim that A’s gaze was an embodied resource aimed
at mobilizing a response (Rossano et al. 2009; Stivers and Rossano 2010),
144 Lucas M. Bietti
specifically from N, as we all (the friends and interviewer) knew that actually
he was the ‘owner’ of the story. Subsequently, the ringing of T’s cell phone
interrupted the interactional sequence. After a moment of mutual laughter in
line 3, N agreed with A’s description of the episode and after a short silence
reused the similar syntactic structure that A employed 2 seconds before. In
line 5, the conversation continued with the events that occurred after the
club broke.
The much shorter duration of the narration about the episode and the absence
of gestures accompanying speech may have been based on the lack of pictures
acting as memory cues and framing the reconstruction of the story, as well as the
fact that C4 was the fourth time that N was faced with the situation of having
to tell quite the same episode. Thus, the fact that N did not lead the narration
about how the club was broken may have been caused by a certain lack of moti-
vation to tell the same episode for a fourth time to the same interviewer because
he believed the episode was part of his and the interviewer’s common ground
(Clark 1996). In other words, if N had told the same story at C4, he would have
violated two ‘maxims of conversation’ (Grice 1975). These are the maxims of
relevance (‘make sure what you say is relevant and timely’) and quantity (‘don’t
say more or less than is required’).
In the next section, I provide a comparative analysis of the use of manual
gestures and other bodily resources (e.g. eye-gaze) used during the reconstruc-
tion of the autobiographical episode (how the club was broken) across the four
contexts of remembering examined above.
Bodily resources and narratives across contexts of remembering

The criteria for selecting which phases of the narrative structure (e.g. introduc-
tion, function, action and reaction) included in the comparison was based on
whether they were present in more than one of the different contexts of remem-
bering that participant N took part in over the eight-week period.
Table 8.1 shows the phases of the narrative that were recurrent across the four
contexts of remembering. Within each of these phases, I selected those instances
which displayed the highest degree of resemblance across contexts. Taking into
account the qualitative and exploratory nature of these comparisons and the fact
that there was no specific hypothesis that I wanted to test beforehand, the selec-
tion of instances with the highest degree of resemblance across contexts did not
rely on the judgments of several raters in order to measure Cohen-Kappa coef-
ficients. In order to avoid selection bias – the selection of examples to support a
particular hypothesis – future systematic comparisons should be made based on
several raters’ judgments and inter-rater reliability.
Although I do not believe each of the narrative and embodied reconstructions
of the episode (how the club was broken) can be directly compared across con-
texts without reflection on their intrinsic narrative differences and considering
the role of interaction, the extracts I present in Table 8.1 allow us to observe
degrees of similarity across contexts. In introducing the autobiographical episode
Table 8.1 Contexts of Embodied Remembering
Contexts Introduction Function State Action Reaction

C1 It was it was to check if the I had wrapped he began to then me
a club (C1: 00:01.6) it in tape hit the club saying ‘no’ (.)
(C1: 00:00.7) (C1: 00:04.9) against the (C1: 00:35.8)
sand
(C1: 00:31.8)
C2 it was mine for checking I had put a he started to and I said
(.) this club the car’s tires tape round it hit it like this ‘no: it’s a
(C2: 00:08.4) (C2: 00:10.2) (C2: 00:44.4) against the family relic’
sand on the (C2: 00:26.8)
beach
(C2: 01:08.5)
C3 A: I had it (.) =It was for Poor club,
e: it was mine checking the it’s gone (.)
(C3: 00:10.3) tires on the went down in
collective history
minibuses (C3: 00:23.3)
(C3: 00:17.5)
C4 [Yes] (.)
Sacha had
broken the
club (.2)
about the club, N generally started narrating the episode by performing manual
gestures displaying the shape of the club in terms of thickness and shape. This
occurred in C1 and C2, but not in the last two contexts, C3 and C4. In C3, N
made a manual gesture temporally synchronized with the possessive pronoun
‘mine’, which he emphasized in his speech. However, N’s manual gesture in
C3 did not display any features that could be associated with the shape of the
club. The narrative in C4, alternatively, lacks an introduction to the episode com-
pletely. As an introduction I refer to the section of the narrative that precedes the
main action, specifically the breaking of the club, and usually provides an orienta-
tion for the listeners by giving details about the setting (time and place), identity
of participants and goals within the story.
The next phase of the episode that remained constant across C1, C2 and C3
deals with the function of the club. Although there were differences between the
ways in which N gesturally demonstrated how to use the club (e.g. right hand
in C1, left hand in C2 and C3), the manner in which N grasped the club and
performed the motion in order to demonstrate the checking of car tires showed
a high degree of resemblance across C1, C2 and C3. As it occurred for the intro-
duction, C4 lacks reference to the function of the club.
We can observe some differences in terms of the ways in which N used manual
gestures to demonstrate that he had wrapped the club with tape because it was
broken. In C1, he employed both hands to simulate binding up the club with
146 Lucas M. Bietti
tape whereas in C2, he used his right hand to hold the club while simulating the
binding with his left hand. In C3 and C4, there was no mention of the state of
the club.
In the phase about the action, that is, how the club was actually broken by N’s
friend, co-verbal behaviors in C1 and C2 presented a high degree of resemblance.
In both contexts of remembering, N simulated gripping the club with his right
hand and hitting it against a hard surface repeatedly. Postural swings differed due
to physical affordances offered by the interactional space. In C1, N used the table
as a hard surface to replace the sand whereas in C2 he used the floor. Hence,
N’s postural sways in C1 were less forceful than in C2, as a result of the different
trajectories to the table and floor in C1 and C2, respectively. C3 lacked reference
to the action about how N broke the club as N assumed that such information
was already known by his friends and, perhaps more importantly, the interviewer
(see C3, L. 6). N mentioned the action phase in C4 but it was not temporally
synchronized with any relevant bodily behaviors.
In the final phase of the autobiographical episode (reaction), N performed a
manual gesture with two open hands in C1, C2 and C3. N’s manual gesture is
accompanied with postural sways in C1, and shrugs in C3. The narrative recon-
struction in C4 lacks N’s reaction to the breaking of the club. This indicates that
N’s gestural configurations did not remain constant across contexts of remem-
bering in relation to his reaction after realizing that his friend had broken the
club. Such variations could have been caused by the presence or absence of the
pictures, that in C1 and C3 made N focus visual attention on them and thereby
he leaned forward to get closer to the table on which the pictures were placed;
whereas in C2 when there were no pictures to look at, he was sitting up straight
and directed his gaze towards the interviewer. This example shows the ways in
which the affordances provided by the material environment (with or without
pictures placed on the table) influenced the configuration of manual gesture and
body position, even in those cases in which the information transmitted verbally
remained quite constant.
In C1, N introduced the autobiographical episode and provided the narrative
structure for the first time. N’s narrative structure was composed of successive
phases sequentially aligned (e.g. introduction, function, state, actor, action and
reaction). Each of these phases involved a complex interanimation of verbal and
bodily resources. By comparing N’s narrative construction in C1 to the multi-
modal communication of the similar episode two weeks later without the pic-
tures, during the individual interview session we noticed important similarities
and differences.
Although, to a great extent, the basic narrative structure provided in C1
resembles the one given in C2, we noticed some important differences in terms
of sequential order. First, the narrative structure in C2 was more complex
than the one presented in C1. Such complexity was evident by the fact that
in C1, N introduced new phases briefly (e.g. action, L. 5–6), then moved on
to the next one (e.g. reaction, L. 7) and then finally returned to the previous
phase (e.g. action, L. 17) and provided new information. In C2, this sort of
narrative structure became a recurrent pattern across the autobiographical epi-
sode (phase 1 → phase 2 → phase 1’). The manner in which N organized the nar-
rative in C2 relied on a spiral timeline, which did not follow the linear and simple
structure presented in C1. I believe the reasons underlying such differences stem
from not only the interviewer’s prompts (L. 1–5, 23, 29, 34), but also the lack
of any external artifacts, in this case pictures. I would argue that the presence of
the pictures framed the autobiographical narrative in non-trivial ways. That is,
C2 created the conditions for N to go beyond the memory boundaries shaped
by the photographs, and thus to provide relevant information about the club
(e.g. location and history) that allowed the addressee to understand the origin
of the club (inside the car, L. 12) and the reasons why (history, L. 19–20) the
breaking of the club was an emotionally loaded autobiographical episode for N
and not for his friends who were part of C1 and C4 and experienced the events
(summer vacation in January 2009). Possible reasons as to why N elaborated the
autobiographical episode more in C2 compared to C1 and C4 can also be found
in the fact that his friends could have acted as a production blocking factor for
N – apart from the fact that in C4 there may have been a certain lack of motiva-
tion and the assumption that the episode was already part of the interviewer’s
shared knowledge. This means that group contexts of remembering may have
created the conditions for the emergence of collaborative inhibition effects (see
Basden et al. 1997; Weldon and Bellinger 1997; Weldon et al. 2000; Wright
and Klumpp 2004). Alternatively, the presence of the pictures in C1 enabled N
to off-load phases of the autobiographical narrative into the environment. Such
off-loading was clearly manifested when N introduced the friend who broke the
club against the sand by using a pointing gesture while redirecting his eye-gaze
towards the interviewer (L. 4–5).
The narrative that N told in C3 presented a more condensed version of the
autobiographical episode. The condensed version of the episode lacked refer-
ence to the main action, that is, how the club was actually broken by his friend.
However, it was not the case that the action phase was simply omitted by N dur-
ing the interview with the pictures. As we have noticed, N’s yes-or-no question
in line 9 indicated that the information about how the club was actually bro-
ken was already shared. N’s redirection of his eye-gaze towards the interviewer
while formulating the question was a bodily resource for mobilizing response
in order to make the common ground between N and the interviewer explicit.
The concept of common ground (Clark 199;, Clark and Brennan 1991) refers
to the shared knowledge that is essential for communication between people. In
order to meaningfully proceed in interpersonal communication, speakers need to
take for granted that, to some extent, their representations are shared with their
addressees (e.g. Tomasello 2008). The interviewer’s confirmation of the fact that
those memories were shared (L. 10) allowed N to move on to the reaction phase
without demonstrating how his friend broke the club against the sand. In C4, N
presented a very much condensed version of the episode (L. 4) that first agreed
with participant A’s description of it an then re-used the same syntactic structure
and lexical items that A employed in line 1. Although this is just a speculation, it
148 Lucas M. Bietti
may have been the case that in C4, N would have assumed that there was no need
to retell the same story to the interviewer for the fourth time.
If we compare the use of bodily resources across contexts of remembering
when N narrated the same episode, it was unlikely a one-to-one correspondence
between verbal and co-verbal resources for all five phases (introduction, func-
tion, state, action, and reaction). However, for the function (C1: 00:01.6; C2:
00:10.2; C3: 00:17.5) and action (C1: 00:14.1 and 00:15.0; C2: 00:24.7 and
01:08.5) phases the situation was different. The analysis has demonstrated that
despite the fact that changes in the narrative structure had a clear impact on the
utilization of bodily resources, for function and action phases, different contexts
of remembering did not affect N’s embodied simulation of how to use the club
(function) and how it was broken (action) to a significant extent. As we observe
in Table 8.1, these were also the sections of the narrative that N mentioned in
three contexts of remembering. Further research exploring the minimal differ-
ences between N’s uses of bodily resources in function and action phases will be
helpful in exploring the extent to which N’s belief in a ‘shared’ narrative with
the interviewer and participants A, T and S may have influenced his subsequent
embodied simulations.
Concluding thoughts
The qualitative micro-analyses focusing on the role of bodily resources during
autobiographical remembering presented in this chapter showed the ways in
which manual gesture (deictic and non-deictic gestures), and relevant changes
in eye-gaze direction and body posture (e.g. postural sways, crossing arms, and
shrugging) shaped the ways in which the autobiographical episode (how the club
was broken) was narratively reconstructed in four contexts of remembering. Over
an eight-week period, successive contexts of remembering as well as the individual
and shared memories of them had a clear impact on how participant N narratively
structured the same autobiographical episode. For example, when comparing
the narrative structure in C1 with C2, we observed how the photographs (C1)
framed the autobiographical narrative in temporal terms by giving it a linear order
(phase 1 → phase 2 → phase 3). Whereas in C2, the lack of photographs seemed
to have altered the linear order in the way N presented the successive phases of
the narrative (phase 1 → phase 2 → phase 1’). Within the spiral time-line in C2, N
added relevant information to give a better understanding of the origin of the club
and his emotional bonds to it. The narrative structure in C3 clearly illustrated how
the common ground between N and the interviewer shaped the narrative struc-
ture, as N knew that he was telling the episode of the club for a third time already.
Telling the same autobiographical episode to the same people repeatedly had an
important influence on its narrative structure over time because of individual and
shared memories of previous contexts of remembering. Additional research is
needed to learn more about the role of the interviewer in shaping differences in
narrative structure throughout different contexts of remembering.
Changes in narrative structure were correlated to changes in the uses of
bodily resources. However, for some of the phases of the narrative that were
recurrent across contexts of remembering, the embodied simulation of actions
when N demonstrated the function of the club and how his friend broke it
remained similar to a large degree. This finding indicates that for the phases of
the narrative that described actions, the use of bodily resources did not change
over time. Future studies on autobiographical remembering during multimodal
communication in experimental settings should empirically test which narrative
phases change and how, and those that do not across different contexts of
remembering.
Based on the qualitative micro-analyses, this study demonstrated that con-
texts of remembering are determined by the interplay of situational, cognitive,
linguistic and bodily resources occurring at multiple but complementary time-
scales. These time-scales include autobiographical memories of the episode being
narrated (years), shared memories of previous contexts of remembering (days,
weeks), narrative phases previously told (minutes, seconds) as well as embodied
simulations of the actions being narrated (seconds, milliseconds).
Note
1 This is the adaptation of Jefferson’s transcription system (Jefferson 2004) that was
used for the transcriptions of the extracts analyzed:
(.) Just noticeable pause

(.2), (1.4) Examples of time pauses
↑word,↓word Onset of noticeable pitch rise or fall
A: word [word Square brackets aligned across adjacent lines
B: [word denote the start of overlapping talk
wor- A dash shows a sharp cut-off
wo:rd Colons show that the speaker has stretched the preceding
sound
word, WORD Underlined sounds are louder, capitals louder still
>word word<
<word word> Inwards arrows show faster speech, outward slower
A: word= The equals sign shows that there is no discernible pause
B: =word between two speakers’ turns or, if put between sounds within
a single turn, shows they run together
˚word˚ Material between ‘degree signs’ is quiet
[------] Duration of crossing arms
[######] Duration of shoulder shrugs
[*****] Duration of changes in eye-gaze direction
(Laughter) Other non-verbal behaviors between parentheses
150 Lucas M. Bietti
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9 Scaffolded joint action
as a micro-foundation of
organizational learning
Brian R. Gordon and Georg Theiner
Organizational learning: an introduction

Organizational learning, at the broadest levels, as it has come to be understood
within the organization theory and management literatures, concerns the expe-
rientially driven changes in knowledge processes, structures, and resources that
enable organizations to perform skillfully in their task environments (Argote and
Miron-Spektor 2011). Understood this way, organizational learning encompasses
organizational knowledge and organizational knowledge creation processes
(Kogut and Zander 1992; Nonaka 1994; Spender 1996; Grant 1996; Cook and
Brown 1999; Nonaka et al. 2006; Nonaka and von Krogh 2009); absorptive
capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990; Zahra and George 2002; Volberda et al.
2010), organizational memory and cognition (Walsh and Ungson 1991; Walsh
1995; Kaplan 2011; Ren and Argote 2011), sensemaking (Weick 1995; Weick
et al. 2005), and related areas. Making sense of what this actually means, and
explicating how it works, has been an important mandate in the field for several
decades now; a quest chronicled, in part, by several influential reviews, including
Fiol and Lyles (1985), Levitt and March (1988), Huber (1991), Crossan et al.
(1999); Argote and Miron-Spektor (2011), and March (2011).
A theory of learning implicitly entails the existence of some sort of memory.
Arguably, this much follows from a common conception of learning, according
to which learning is broadly understood as the processes by which prior experi-
ence comes to influence an actor’s subsequent action or understanding by modi-
fying some underlying substrate on which those rely (Reisberg 1999). This holds
even though the relation between what could objectively be said to happen in the
world and what the actor subjectively experiences and learns from such experi-
ence is often tenuous (Daft and Weick 1984; Weick 1995; March 2011). And it
also makes sense to identify a certain range or type of phenomena as instances of
‘organizational learning’ before we embark on the task of discovering the under-
lying processes and mechanisms which are causally responsible for bringing them
about (Machamer et al. 2000; Craver and Bechtel 2006).
From this perspective, to propose a theory of organizational learning is to try and
say something about the way that experience comes to affect how an organization
situates itself in its environment and deals with flow of events it encounters – to
Scaffolded joint action 155
say something, that is, about the memory processes operating at an organizational
level of analysis. When we do so, we engage in what Whetten et al. (2009) termed
a ‘vertical borrowing’ of theory from one level of analysis to another (e.g. Sand-
elands and Stablein 1987; Larson and Christensen 1993; Hutchins 1995; Runci-
man 2005). In the case of organizational learning and memory, it is a borrowing
we argue is justified not by the postulation of a single mechanism underlying both
individual and group manifestations of these phenomena, but from its fruitfulness
as a heuristic for comparing functionally similar sets of relationships between enti-
ties and events located at different levels of analysis.
One caveat may be warranted. Because organizations are made up – at least in
part – by people (Orlikowski 2007; Pentland 2011), things become a bit more
complicated once we acknowledge that some aspects of organizational learning
and memory are indeed explained – at least in part – by what happens in the
heads of individual members of the organization (cf. Levitt and March 1988;
Simon 1991; March 1991; Spender 1996; Cook and Brown 1999). Implicating a
role for individual learning and memory in larger organizational processes, how-
ever, is far from asserting, like Simon, that organizational learning and memory is
‘nothing but . . .’ what occurs at the individual level. Even when organizational
and individual manifestations of learning and memory incorporate a common
substrate – like the brains of specific individuals – they may do so in very dif-
ferent ways and to different effects. Learning and memory processes at the one
level, then, may be implicated by learning and memory processes at the other –
potentially in complex, interleaved, and nested ways. Working out the details of
these relationships is part of the larger, ongoing project in which we are engaged.
The construct of organizational learning is often defined functionally. That is,
it is described and operationalized in terms of changes in an organization’s actual
or potential performance that result from experience (Argote and Miron-Spektor
2011). The apparent simplicity of this approach belies an enormous amount of
controversy, as one might naturally expect in a field of inquiry that is this robust.
For starters, whose experience is a complex question, in part because learning and
knowledge processes span multiple levels of analysis, from the individual to the
organizational (Crossan et al. 1999; Argote and Miron-Spektor 2011), and in
part because the experience can be vicarious (Cohen and Levinthal 1999; Huber
1991; Zahra and George 2002; Volberda et al. 2010). Moreover, the construct of
experience as it has come to be understood in the literature itself is complicated,
as it has expanded over time from more traditional notions tied to the actual his-
tories of organizations (and the people who comprise them) to include deliberate
search and imaginative processes that are in some cases only loosely tied, if at all,
to actual events (Daft and Weick 1984; March et al. 1991; Gavetti and Levinthal
2000; Felin and Foss 2009; Felin and Zenger 2009; Salvato 2009; March 2011).
Among the many foundational issues in the field, our concern here is with what is
sometimes called the micro-foundations of organizational learning (cf. Felin and
Foss 2005; 2006; Barney and Felin 2013).
A micro-foundations approach asks a deceptively simple question. It asks, of a
particular capacity or property that is attributed to an organization, what are the
156 Brian R. Gordon and Georg Theiner
resources, processes and mechanisms that underwrite this capacity or property?
Adopting a micro-foundations approach is thus an inquiry into how things work
(Dennett 1978; Bechtel and Richardson 1993; Cummins 2000; Machamer et al.
2000) that seeks to open up the ‘black box’ of organizational learning in order
to see how the organizational-level properties and capacities are enabled by the
interactions of more basic elements and processes.
When we turn to the micro-foundations of organizational learning, many dif-
ferent answers to this question have been proposed. Some scholars, often taking
a methodological individualist approach (Felin and Foss 2009), have sought to
locate the micro-foundations of organizational learning in the heads of the indi-
viduals who constitute the organization (Walsh 1995; Kaplan 2011). In a very
influential paper, Herbert Simon, for example, asserted that ‘all learning takes
place inside individual human heads; an organization learns in only two ways:
(a) by the learning of its members, or (b) by ingesting new members who have
knowledge the organization didn’t previously have’ (1991, p. 125). Other schol-
ars, often adopting a methodological collectivist approach (Felin and Foss 2009),
have contested the idea that organizational knowledge is (completely) reducible
to the individual level and have sought, instead, to ground important aspects
of organizational learning in transactive memory systems (Wegner 1986; Ren
and Argote 2011; Theiner 2013) or in constructs like organizational routines
and capabilities (Nelson and Winter 1982; Levitt and March 1988; Argote and
Miron-Spektor 2011).
In their seminal treatment, Nelson and Winter (1982), for example, explicitly
introduced the notion of an organizational routine as a macro- or organizational-
level analog of skill at the individual level. In general terms, routines and capa-
bilities are typically understood as patterns of interdependent action among
individuals that are learned over time and oriented toward accomplishing some
‘larger’ unit of work that requires the coordination of multiple individuals (Winter
2003; Becker 2004; Felin and Foss 2009). Moreover, they often bring together
people with very different knowledge, skills, and experiences (Felin et al. 2012),
involve flows of activity that can occur over varying stretches of time, and, poten-
tially, can involve action that takes place at many different locations. Finally, they
often entail action that relies upon various socio-material ensembles (Orlikowski
2000; 2007).1
Seeking the micro-foundations of organizational learning in higher-level con-
structs like organizational routines and capabilities is not without its own chal-
lenges, however. Nelson and Winter’s approach, along with subsequent work in
the literature rooted in methodological collectivism, has been criticized as of late
for two reasons: (i) for not explaining the origins and historical emergence of
routines and capabilities, and (ii) for not explaining how macro-level phenomena
such as routines and capabilities are assembled from a heterogeneous network
of entities, processes and interactions operating at lower-levels (Felin and Foss
2005; 2006; 2009; Barney and Felin 2013).
We are sympathetic to this critique. At a minimum, one does not have to
be a reductionist to see the legitimacy of inquiry into the micro-foundations
of macro-organizational phenomena. But perhaps more importantly, if the goal
is to understand what factors drive organizational-level dependent variables, we
think it is reasonable to look for explanations wherever they may be found, with-
out necessarily biasing our explanations towards certain privileged levels. At the
same time, we remain cognizant of critiques of reductionistic approaches, which
have long noted the challenges, practically and conceptually, of skipping directly
from action, choice, and knowledge at the individual level to organizational-level
descriptions and outcomes (Pentland 2011; Hodgson 2012; Winter 2012). What
is needed is a proper micro-foundational approach that is not reductionistic in
nature (Ross and Spurrett 2004). What we suggest is that routines and capabili-
ties can be understood as larger-scale units of analysis that emerge from – though
are not necessarily reducible to – the people, artifacts, processes, and their inter-
actions that comprise the organization’s basic elements (Felin and Foss 2005;
Felin et al. 2012; Barney and Felin 2013). We thus favor a multi-level approach
to social ontology (Sawyer 2003; 2004; 2005; Salvato and Rerup 2011; Barney
and Felin 2013).
In this chapter, we examine routines and capabilities as an important micro-
foundation for organizational learning. Adopting a micro-foundational approach
in line with Barney and Felin (2013), we propose a new model for explaining
how routines and capabilities play a causal role in transforming experience into
repertoires of (actual or potential) organization-level behavior.2 More specifically,
we argue that routines and capabilities are built out of capacities for shared –
both joint and collective – intentionality (Tomasello 1999; 2008; 2014; Brat-
man 1999a; 2007; 2014) that enable individuals to engage in complex forms
of collaboration in conjunction with multiple layers of scaffolds that encompass
material and symbolic resources, social processes, and cultural norms and prac-
tices (Suchman 1987; Norman 1991; Simon 1994; Weick 1995; Hutchins 1995;
Wertsch 1998; Clark 1997; 2008; Wilson 2004; Sutton 2010; Menary 2007;
Theiner 2011; Kirsh 2013). In short, we outline what we call the ‘scaffolded joint
action’ model and suggest its potential as a micro-foundation of organizational
learning.
The ‘scaffolded joint action’ model
Preliminaries
We start by outlining the basic elements needed for purposive intentional action
at the individual level and build up from there, introducing additional elements
needed to explain more complex forms of joint action in a series of stages. We
do this because we think it is critical to understand how the various elements
of the psychological infrastructure we specify enable progressively more com-
plex forms of joint action. Our model is broadly inspired by Tomasello’s ‘shared
intentionality hypothesis’ (2014), which views the evolution from individual to
joint and eventually collective intentionality as a series of adaptations for dealing
with increasingly complex problems of social coordination. To be clear, though,
our model is primarily intended as a conceptual model. It is not meant to describe
the ontogenetic or phylogenetic development of human cognition, although it
is quite reasonable to suppose that the conceptual layers of our model roughly
correspond to the ontogenetic and phylogenetic ordering in which our collab-
orative skills for joint action are acquired. Nor do we seek to provide a conceptual
analysis of what constitutes a ‘joint action’ in terms of necessary and sufficient
conditions – an enterprise that has generated a flurry of activity within the philo-
sophical community (cf. Schweikard and Schmid 2013). Instead, the purpose of
our model is to describe a cluster of interconnected cognitive capacities whose
manifestation underlies paradigmatic displays of joint and collective intentional-
ity. To succeed in this endeavor, we don’t have to argue that any subset of these
capacities is strictly necessary for the performance of joint actions. But we do
think that their coordinated operation is causally linked to a wide range of human
collaborative activities at which our model is aimed.
Individual Intentionality
Humans, in general, have sophisticated faculties supporting purposive inten-
tional action at the individual level (Bratman 1987; 1999a; 2014; Tomasello et al.
2005; Grammont et al. 2010). Our model of scaffolded joint action takes this
cognitive machinery underwriting individual intentionality – or, what Bratman
(2007; 2014) has termed our planning agency – as its basic building block. We
will not elaborate much on this aspect of our model here, as its central features
are well recognized.
Purposive intentional action at the individual level requires three basic ele-
ments (Tomasello et al. 2005; Bratman 1987; 1999a; 2014): (i) an ability to
represent goal-states; (ii) an ability to develop situationally appropriate plans of
action, of varying degrees of novelty, for achieving goals by intervening in the
environment; and (iii) an ability to represent and track changes in the goal- and
action-relevant states of the world over the course of time during which the
action is carried out.
Goal-state representations specify a desired end, a particular state of affairs
that the agent desires in and of itself or for its instrumental utility in some larger
scheme. The ability to represent goal-states entails an ability to represent things in
the world not just as they currently are, but in ways that they could be, should be,
or might have been. It entails the ability to represent counterfactuals, basic norma-
tive constraints, and alternatives (Hofstadter 1979; Fauconnier and Turner 2002).
Action plan representations capture ways of intervening in the causal com-
merce of the world to bring about various desired changes. These action plans are
rooted in an agent’s sensory and motor capacities for engaging skillfully with the
world (Clark 1997; Grammont et al. 2010; Noë 2012). Action plans are typically
partial, incomplete, and responsive control structures for bringing about desired
changes (Grush 2004; Clark 1997). They are partial in the sense of representing,
at best, schematic aspects of an agent’s complex interactions with the world over
time in the pursuit of some objective; touching on critical points in the cascade
of events, they leave open many details and ramifications that get filled over time,
often on the fly in the reciprocal interactions between agent and world (Clark
1997; Grush 2004; Noë 2012; Bratman 2014).
Environmental representations enable the agent to track select aspects of the
external environment that are relevant to the agent’s niche and action plans (Gib-
son 1979; Noë 2012). Many of these environmental representations are funda-
mentally ‘action-oriented’ (Millikan 1995), in that they do not depict the world
‘as it is’, in agent-neutral terms, as much as they capture the world from the
perspective of an embodied agent with particular skills and capabilities rooted
in a history of interactions in a specific niche (Clark and Toribio 1994; Barsalou
1999; Glenberg and Kaschak 2002; Gallese and Lakoff 2005; Noë 2012).
From individual to joint intentionality

As human beings, we do not just act as individuals, but are able to merge our goals,
plans, and actions with one another in distinctively cooperative ways such that we
act jointly. Singing a duet together, lifting a large piece of furniture together, or
robbing a bank together, are all examples of joint action. Joint actions must be
distinguished from situations in which two people happen to do the same thing,
in pursuit of the same goal, but independent of one another (Searle 1991). This is
true even in cases where they both know about each other’s goals. For example, if
I am singing an aria on my balcony, and my next-door neighbor is singing an aria
on her balcony, then, even if we both share the same goal of attracting as many
spectators as possible, in conditions of common knowledge, we are just wannabe
artists singing in parallel, not jointly. Joint actions are also different from strategi-
cally coordinated individual actions. Consider two people driving towards each
other on a narrow dirt road who avoid a heads-on collision by executing the same
swerving maneuver – either both swerving to the right, or both swerving to the
left. In this situation, the goals of those two agents are perfectly aligned; they take
into account each other’s behavior and adjust their actions accordingly. What
is missing in both cases, however, is a characteristic form of ‘we’ intentionality
that is peculiar to joint actions, and distinguishes them from other types of goal-
directed social interactions.
Beginning in the late 1980s, there has been an increased interest in understand-
ing the conceptual, normative, and psychological underpinnings of joint action.
Philosophers have argued that the ability to engage in joint actions requires a spe-
cial kind of collective or ‘we’ intentionality that cannot be identified with the kind
of intentionality that is required to perform individual actions (Bratman 1992;
1993; 1999b; Gilbert 1989; 1990; Searle 1991; 1995; Tuomela 2007). Devel-
opmental and comparative psychologists have found that pre-linguistic (or barely
speaking) infants are capable of engaging in basic forms of joint action in ways
in which the great apes, our nearest primate relatives, are not (Tomasello et al.
2005; Tomasello 2014). Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists have begun
to unearth distinctive cognitive and neural processes which support real-time
joint action, challenging the assumption – still fairly popular within mainstream
psychology– that the cognitive foundations of human behavior can be under-
stood by studying individual minds in isolation (Clark 1996; Sebanz et al. 2006;
Knoblich et al. 2011). Over the past decade and a half, the study of collective
intentionality has turned into a rapidly growing, and increasingly interdisciplinary
area of research reaching into, and generating interest from, cognitive science,
sociology, anthropology, legal theory, economics, and political science (cf. Meg-
gle 2002; Koepsell and Moss 2003; Tummolini and Castelfranchi 2006; Schmid
et al. 2008; Butterfill and Sebanz 2011; Schmitz et al. 2013; Chant et al. 2014).
The species-unique human capability to engage in joint action is a fundamental
building block of the social, cultural, and institutional realities in which we live.
Following Tomasello (2010; 2014), we distinguish two main types of shared
collaborative activities, each of which is grounded in a distinctive psychological
infrastructure or ‘we’ intentionality. Those two forms are (i) joint collaborative
activity, which is based on the capacity for joint intentionality, and (ii) group col-
laborative activity, which is based on the capacity for collective intentionality. We
now briefly outline the difference between these two types of collaboration, the
specific problems they impose on the coordination of action, and the cognitive
skills and motivational propensities on which they rest.
Joint intentionality
We understand joint collaborative activity as a second-personal mode of engage-
ment between self and other that, at the very minimum, satisfies at least two
conditions (Tomasello 2014). First, each agent actively participates in the joint
activity, with a fundamentally cooperative attitude, rather than passively observing
it from the outside. Second, the engagement always involves a specific person – a
‘significant’ other (Mead 1934) – with whom the individual stands in a direct
relationship. By saying that the basic form of a joint collaborative activity involves
a dyadic relationship, we do not want to exclude the possibility of triadic or more
ramified forms of joint collaboration that share many of the same underlying
features (discussed below). For definitional purposes, what matters is that the
structure of those collaborative interactions does not add up to a group, under-
stood as a cohesive collaborative unit that persists over time, and is characterized
by a more permanent division of labor (cf. Arrow et al. 2000).
The joint intentionality of acting together has a dual-level structure which
combines social sharedness with individual differentiation. This enables the col-
laborative pursuit of joint endeavors in which each partner plays a distinct yet
complementary role. In the extant literature on joint action, there are numerous
proposals for making the intuitive concept of shared (both ‘joint’ and ‘collective’)
intentionality more precise. Philosophers have given detailed accounts of the dis-
tinctive content and mode of shared intentions, as well as related collective inten-
tional attitudes, as key ingredients of joint actions (Schweikard and Schmid 2013).
Cognitive psychologists have studied systems of mental representations that are
dedicated to the planning and execution of joint actions (Knoblich et al. 2011).
More recently, ecological psychologists have found that a surprising variety of
social coordination can be achieved through the dynamics of perception–action
couplings which do not require that the participating agents represent any joint
action plans or shared knowledge structures (Dale et al. 2013). In order to char-
acterize the interplay between these two seemingly distinct but causally entangled
psychological mechanisms that underlie joint action processes, Knoblich et al.
(2011) helpfully distinguish between planned and emergent types of interpersonal
coordination. Even though our own approach is primarily informed by represen-
tational and planning-theoretic accounts of joint intentionality, we recognize the
importance of more basic forms of coordinated action that interact in potentially
complex ways with the former.
More specifically, our model combines a number of features that have previ-
ously been discussed in the work of Bratman (1999a; 2007; 2014), Tomasello
et al. (2005), and Tomasello (2008; 2010; 2014). We suggest that planned forms
of joint collaborative activities typically require that each of the participants be
capable of (a) representing a joint goal, (b) representing a joint action plan which
supports the integration of interconnected sub-plans for self and other, (c) jointly
attending to selected aspects of the environment which are relevant to the task
at hand, and (d) regulating one’s actions in conformity with the social-evaluative
judgments of others. As we remarked earlier, we do not claim that each of these
conditions is individually necessary to engage in joint actions, nor do we go so
far as to assert that they are jointly sufficient in each and every case. But our
contention is that a significant portion of joint collaborative activities involves an
exercise of the suggested psychological capacities. Let us, then, expand on our
description of conditions (a)–(d) in some detail.
(a) To begin with, for two persons to form a joint goal, such as hunting a stag
together, their goal structures must be appropriately interlocked to ensure the
coordination of their joint actions. I must have the goal to hunt a stag together
with you, and you must have the goal to hunt a stag together with me. It would
not constitute a joint action if each of us were to pursue the same goal – say, to
capture a particular stag – separately, without the goal of doing so in a collab-
orative fashion. We would then, again, be hunting in parallel rather than jointly.
Second, we must be mutually aware of each other’s goal to hunt a stag together.3
In classical game-theoretic treatments of common knowledge, it is frequently
assumed that such mutual awareness must be iterated ad infinitum (Lewis 1969).
More realistically, it is sufficient that potential collaborators recognize that there
is enough ‘common ground’ (Clark and Brennan 1991; Clark and Schaefer
1989; Clark 1996) between them that they decide to launch a joint action. If this
presumption is somehow challenged, e.g. because of unexpected disturbances
of their activity, people are certainly capable of engaging in several iterations of
recursive mind reading (‘she thinks that I think that she thinks . . .’); but it does
not follow that they always go to the limit in advance of a decision to cooperate
(cf. Tomasello 2008).
(b) Central to the notion of a joint collaborative activity is not only that two peo-
ple have a joint goal, but that they form a shared intention of achieving that goal
together. Generally speaking, the difference between having a goal and forming
an intention is that the latter resolves a deliberative question, thereby settling the
agent on a specific course of action.4 Figuring out what exactly it means for two
people to share an intention is a contested issue (e.g. Searle 1991; 1995; Gilbert
1989; 2003; Bratman 1993; 1999b; Velleman 1997; Tuomela 2007). Given our
explanatory interests, we are partial to Bratman’s (1999a; 2007; 2014) planning-
theoretic account which identifies shared intentions with socially interconnected –
or, as we shall say – joint action plans. On this account, the capacity of human
beings to develop shared action plans is grounded in, and thus broadly continuous
with, the core capacity for temporally extended individual planning agency. Just as
human agents conceive of their current activities as being embedded in their past
and future arcs of action, or projects, they can see their activities as being embed-
ded in what they are doing with others, and this understanding guides and frames
their individual activities. As a species of action plan, the role of the joint action
plan is to coordinate individual actions and plans, to serve as a framework for
joint deliberations about how (and whether) to proceed, and to structure relevant
bargaining about who does what and when (Bratman 1999a; 2014). Joint action
plans usually have a hierarchical means–ends structure, are typically partial, and
conditional with respect to the appropriate attitudes of one’s collaborator. Joint
action plans, thus understood, satisfy three major requirements for a joint collab-
orative activity (cf. Bratman 1992): the interconnected agents (i) must coordinate
or ‘mesh’ their respective sub-plans and actions in ways that track the joint goal,
(ii) have an appropriate commitment (though perhaps for different reasons) to
the joint activity, and ensure that the mutual responsiveness outlined in (i), and
(iii) have a commitment to support one another, playing their respective parts
if the need arises. Let us briefly highlight two important aspects of Bratman’s
planning-theoretic account – one cognitive, the other normative.
First, in many cases of interest, a successful joint action plan calls for a division
of labor in which individuals play complementary roles. This requires that each
collaborator must be able to conceptualize the distinct sub-plans of self and other
in a common representational format, as being carried out simultaneously as part
of the same joint action, and while recognizing that those roles are – at least in
principle – interchangeable among the two co-actors. This is what we have earlier
called the ‘dual-level’ structure of collective intentionality (cf. Weick and Roberts
1993). Tomasello (2014) suggests that the need to construct dual-level cognitive
models in the pursuit of joint collaborative activities is likely to have enhanced,
possibly even enabled, our ability to conceptualize ‘role-based’ categories (Mark-
man and Stillwell 2001) such as ‘pedestrian’, ‘customer’, or ‘referee’. Such cate-
gories are defined functionally, in terms of relations between an entity and a wider
network of events or processes in which it participates. In addition, a dual-level
understanding of joint action sets the stage for a more abstract, agent-neutral
conception of ‘slots’ or purely generic social roles that anybody could play, which
is characteristic of collective intentionality (cf. below). More generally, this ability
may have been an evolutionary precursor of domain-general forms of higher-
order relational thinking that have been considered a hallmark feature of human
cognition (Penn et al. 2008).
Second, the formation of a joint action plan supplies the planning agency
of collaborating agents with basic norms of social rationality. If two people act
jointly, for example, there will be a rational pressure to adjust their joint plan
states in ways that are consistent with each other’s beliefs, intentions and atti-
tudes. There will also be rational pressure to fill in the details of their prior partial
plans with the necessary means, to engage in coherent means–ends reasoning,
and to initiate preliminary steps of their joint activity. And there will also be pres-
sure towards social stability over time: a defeasible presumption, shared by both
parties, in favor of following through with their prior plan, other things being
equal. For Bratman, the emergence of these social norms is directly grounded in
the practical rationality of planning agency as such. Importantly, this shows that
intentionally shared agency goes beyond less demanding forms of social coor-
dination where each agent intends to do her part but merely expects the other
to do likewise. Joint intentionality implies that I have a practical – not purely
instrumental – reason to coordinate my actions with yours, to support your role,
and to refrain from ways of acting that would jeopardize the continuation of our
joint action; and so do you. Gilbert (1989; 2003) has argued for the even stron-
ger thesis that entering a joint commitment generates a sui generis type of group
norm that involves an obligation not to act contrary to the collective goal, a right
to demand an appropriate performance of others, and an entitlement to rebuke
others for failing to do so.
(c) An important part of intentional agency is monitoring one’s progress
towards the desired goal state. To do this, an agent must be capable of construct-
ing a model of her environment that represents whether an action was executed
appropriately, and whether it had the desired effect. To emphasize the selective,
top-down mediated aspect of intentional perception, we use the term attention
here. When two people act together, they must be able to attend jointly to the
effects of their actions in the pursuit of a joint goal. Joint attention subsumes an
entire host of psychological processes that allow cooperating agents to coordinate
their attentions in ways that establish a perceptual ‘common ground’ (Tomasello
1995; Moore and Dunham 1995; Clark 1996; Carpenter et al. 1998). Being able
to do this requires several things.
First, individuals must be able to attend to the effects of their own actions in
addition to the actions of the other person, in a way that allows them to integrate
the effects of the other person’s actions with their own, in order to assess whether
or not the integrated effects of their actions are consistent with their joint action
plans. Second, both people must be aware that each person is jointly attending to
the situation and the unfolding events. This, in turn, means that, at least poten-
tially, each individual can attend to the attention that the other is paying to one’s
attention, and so forth. Third, each participant must understand that both indi-
viduals can have different, first-person, subjective perspectives on a single object,
action, or event which is the target of their joint attention (Moll and Tomasello
2007). Note that this does not refer to more prosaic benefits of collaboration
involving facts like one actor might see or know things that the other does not.
Nor does it refer to the pedestrian fact that collaborating partners often attend
to different aspects of their environment at different stages of their joint activ-
ity. Instead, it refers to an understanding that two people can attend to one and
the same aspect of the world, but each of them interprets it, simultaneously, in a
different light – i.e. through a lens that is structured by the complementary roles
each actor plays in their joint action. In sum, joint attention exhibits the same
dual-level structure that is characteristic of joint intentionality in general.
(d) Finally, the opportunity to engage in joint collaborative activities requires
that one is able to find a suitable partner, or be chosen as such by others. What
makes somebody attractive as a potential collaborator in the eyes of others is not
only the possession of a specific skill set that is relevant to the task at hand, but
the confidence that she is likely to honor the commitments implied by a joint
action: to do one’s fair share of the work, to provide help if needed, and to share
the spoils at the end. From an evolutionary perspective, human beings thus had
to develop a special concern for social self-monitoring (Moll and Tomasello 2007;
Tomasello 2014) together with their basic joint collaborative skills. A good col-
laborator needs to have a keen sense of how her performances are being gauged
by others, and a concomitant ability to regulate her actions so as to affect the
outcome of that evaluation in a positive way. This ‘cooperative’ mode of self-
monitoring pertains to the prospect of collaborating directly with specific others.
As such, it predates more abstract forms of normative self-governance that are
concerned with ‘fitting’ into certain group-level patterns that are governed by
cultural conventions.
Tomasello (2014) argues that obligate collaborative foraging was instrumental
in creating the conditions that brought on the evolution of the cognitive archi-
tecture that is necessary for task-specific joint action in bounded environments.
While this new set of cognitive capacities endowed our hominid ancestors with
impressive capacities for joint intentionality that enabled qualitatively new kinds
of shared cooperative activities (Bratman 1992; Tomasello et al. 2012), in and of
themselves, those alone are not adequate to explain the full range of collaborative
action that ‘modern’ human beings are capable of; something more is needed to
engage in the kinds of collaborative activities that involve what Tomasello terms
collective intentionality.
Collective intentionality
We understand group collaborative activity as an agent-neutral, transpersonal
engagement with others as members of complex social groups, such as social
organizations, institutions, or entire cultures (Tomasello 2014). Living in large
groups with a complex social organization means that one has to be prepared
to coordinate one’s actions with those of people with whom one does not have
any ‘common ground’ (Clark 1996) based on direct, second-personal engage-
ments. This includes both the synchronic coordination with in-group strangers
through large-scale cooperative arrangements, as well as the diachronic coordi-
nation with one’s ancestors and descendants through the transmission of knowl-
edge and skills. Becoming a competent member of such groups requires that one
be able to take on board the viewpoint of the ‘generalized’ other (Mead 1934).
From an evolutionary perspective, this increase in social complexity triggered the
development of a ‘group-minded’ type of collective intentionality that underlies
conventionalized culture, norms and institutions, including full-blown symbolic
language (Tomasello 2008; 2014).
According to Tomasello, the transformation from joint to collective inten-
tionality was effected by a process of conventionalization, which has both coor-
dinative and transmissive effects (Tomasello 2014, p. 81). On the one hand,
conventionalization ensures an implicit ‘agreement’ to do things a certain way
as long as others are willing to do the same (e.g. to drive on the right side of
the road). On the other hand, doing things in some agreed-upon way automati-
cally sets a precedent that can be copied by others who want to coordinate their
actions as well. In effect, culturally shared norms and practices are ‘scaffolds’ for
coordinating one’s behavior with that of anyone else in the group.
Shared cultural practices serve as a marker of group identity. Members of the
same group can be expected to have a common stock of culturally specific back-
ground knowledge, skills, and values (Shore 1996; Chase 2006), which makes
them attractive as potential collaboration partners. However, recognizing others
who belong to the same cultural group, and being recognized by others as such, is
far from trivial in large populations. Consequently, conspicuous displays of one’s
group identity serve to advertise one’s aptitude as a knowledgeable and trustwor-
thy collaborator. As part of our collective ‘we’ intentionality, human beings have
a pronounced in-group/out-group psychology that serves to cement a strong
sense of belonging to a larger whole (Tajfel 1978; 1981; Turner et al. 1987).
Human displays of group identity take on a large variety of species-unique forms
that range from distinctively group-level emotions including collective pride,
guilt, and shame (Seger et al. 2007; Haidt et al. 2008) to the self-identification of
cultures in terms of their collective ‘histories’ (Halbwachs 1992; Assmann 1995).
Conventional cultural practices serve to indicate a cultural ‘common ground’
(Clark 1996): things ‘we’ all know we do, and can expect others to do (or know)
even if we have not personally experienced them doing it. Cultural ‘common
ground’ is established conventionally through traditions, rituals, and narratives
(Chase 2006). For example, Chwe (2003) argues that the main function of many
public ceremonies and rituals – ranging from coronation ceremonies to Super
Bowl beer commercials – is to bring certain ‘facts’ out in the open, by letting
everyone know what everybody else knows, and thus to shape a group’s cultural
‘common ground’. Some cultural conventions are the product of explicit agree-
ments, but not all conventions require anything like an agreement (Lewis 1969).
A powerful source of the conventionalization is the simple habituation to
group-level ‘precedents’ (Lewis 1969; see also Berger and Luckmann 1966). In
a recurrent situation which presents a coordination problem, we tend to do as
we did before – provided that the collectively adopted solution worked for us
in the past, it is in everyone’s best interest that the solution persists, and that
everyone expects everybody else to conform to it (Lewis 1969). Newcomers to
the situation will then only need to imitate the existing regularity. But perhaps
more importantly, human beings go to great lengths to teach social conventions
to others (Tomasello 2010), and employ a diverse and flexible set of ‘mindshap-
ing’ practices – such as distinctively human imitation, pedagogy, narrative self-
construction, and norm enforcement – designed to make each other more alike,
and thus easier to understand (Zawidzki 2013). Human social learning is not only
fundamentally collaborative but deeply enculturated (Lave and Wenger 1991;
Bruner 1996; Tomasello 1999). Because the maintenance of our group-mediated
collaborative lifestyle5 crucially depends on the vertical transmission of expertise
that is hard to acquire individually but critical for survival, humans have invested
a lot of cultural effort into the construction of complex learning environments
that ‘scaffold’ information-sharing practices across generations (Sterelny 2012).
The conventionalization of group cooperative activities also transformed the
procedures by which individuals are evaluated for their collaborative perfor-
mances. It fostered the emergence of social norms that are not shaped by, and
geared towards the regulation of second-personal encounters, but intended to
apply in an agent-neutral, transpersonal, fully generic mode (Tomasello 2014).
Social norms in this sense are conventional in that they are shared mutual expec-
tations about how to behave in various social settings that are considered part of
the cultural ‘common ground’ (Clark 1996) of a group. They are generic in at
least three senses (Tomasello 2014, pp. 88–89).
First, they imply an ‘objective’ standard against which an individual’s job per-
formance is being judged. This is possible because the criteria for what counts as
‘doing a good job’ are no longer based on one’s personal experience with specific
others who screwed up, cheated, or copped out on us, but depend instead on
a conventionalized understanding of social roles and cultural practices. Second,
they are generic in their source, because they are not issued by individuals on
the basis of personal preferences and observations. Instead, they arise from a
collective-intentional commitment to certain agreed-upon norms. This not only
involves one’s own commitment to follow those norms, but also carries the impli-
cation that others ought to do likewise, or are bound to face sanctions over non-
compliance. Linguistically, these norms are typically expressed in generically as
‘timeless’, ‘objective’ states of affairs when they are enforced (‘One cannot do it
like that’) or taught (‘It works like this’). Lastly, they are generic in their target,
because they are in principle directed at anyone who identifies herself as a mem-
ber of the group, and thus – perhaps tacitly – accepts the social norms as part
of the cultural ‘common ground’. As ‘group-minded’ creatures, people tend to
internalize the social force of the norm, and apply it to themselves if they violate it
even in the absence of any concrete second-personal engagements. For example,
people feel guilty that they stole something regardless of whether they actually
caused any harm to the rightful owner of the stolen property.
In sum, the cooperative turn from joint to collective intentionality fostered the
development of new forms of normative self-monitoring (Tomasello 2014), in
which individuals monitor and regulate their actions in accordance with generic
group norms. It thus became an important social goal to protect one’s pub-
lic reputation within the group so as to maintain one’s viability as a potential
collaborator. The strong force of the expectation to conform to generic group
norms has several motivational sources (ibid., p. 88). ‘Group-minded’ people
have an instrumental reason to conform so as to coordinate successfully, a pru-
dential reason to avoid public reproach and disgrace; and a strategic reason to
refrain from non-conformity so as to signal their affiliation with the group’s
identity.
This new kind of collaboration is characterized by the emergence of stabi-
lizable groups operating in socially enacted environments – both of which are
capable of enduring beyond specific encounters (Tsoukas and Chia 2002). These
groups can be assembled from a large, heterogeneous pool of individuals who,
while sharing a cultural ‘common ground,’ have little to no overlap in domain-
specific knowledge, skill, expertise, or perspective (Nickerson and Zenger 2004;
Hsieh et al. 2007). This affords two kinds of organizational advantage (Nahapiet
and Ghoshal 1998; Smaldino 2014). First, it provides an incentive for group
members to accumulate in-depth individual expertise which they can inject into
shared collaborative ventures. Second, it allows for the construction of an ‘assem-
bly bonus’ (Collins and Guetzkow 1964; Conner and Prahalad 1996) in comple-
mentary tasks, stemming from co-specialization, integration, or the combination
of both (Lawrence and Lorsch 1967; Larson 2009).
At the same time, these groups support the development of stable role struc-
tures, where the roles are assigned responsibilities for specific tasks, the role-
holders are granted special status and rights as they pertain to the execution of
the tasks related to these roles, and where the performance of individuals holding
a specific role in a particular circumstance is governed by conventionalized norms
established by the group (Tomasello 2012; cf. March 1994; Searle 1995). And
finally, these are groups that are capable of ‘hijacking’ the agentive powers of
the individuals who comprise them under appropriate conditions such that these
individuals come to understand at least some of their own actions in terms predi-
cated on the role they play in the organization’s actions, objectives, and strategies
(King et al. 2010). In this context, King et al. argue that these organizations are
capable of assuming something of an independent reality, becoming, as it were,
a macro-actor in the minds of the outside individuals in the relevant, larger com-
munities in which they are situated – actors that are, at some level, understood to
have an intentionality of their own, independent of the individuals who comprise
the organization (cf. Theiner and O’Connor 2010; Theiner et al. 2011; List and
Pettit 2011; Huebner 2013).
We can now see how collective intentionality underpins the collaborative
mindset which allows an individual to be ‘plugged’ into an organizational matrix.
First is an ability to represent and fluidly use more sophisticated and abstract
notions of roles, rules, and status functions that exist independently of the actual
person who carries out the role in any particular situation (Tomasello 2012;
Searle 1995). These roles specify what should be done in particular circumstances
by way of a ‘logic of appropriateness’ (March 1994) that articulates the (pro-
visional, partial, and incomplete) duties and responsibilities the role-bearer has
over an entire range of circumstances. Second is an ability to engage in more
sophisticated types of monitoring. Joint action, in these new cases, entails capa-
bilities of specifying, at an abstract level, what a role-bearer’s contribution should
be in functional and/or procedural terms in addition to capacities enabling peo-
ple to monitor outputs or process conformance of others – notions that are core
to Ouchi’s notions of output, process, and ‘clan’ control systems (Ouchi 1979;
1980; Eisenhardt 1985; Simons 1994). Last is an ability to represent enduring
joint efforts as institutionalized beings in their own right – as macro-actors with
an enduring identity, goals, plans, preferences, etc. that is independent of those
of the individuals who comprise the organization at any particular moment (King
et al. 2010).
There are two additional features which distinguish group collaborative activi-
ties, especially in organizational contexts, from basic forms of joint intentionality.
First, in lieu of the stronger requirement that joint action plans ought to ‘mesh’,
the more flexible arrangement is typically that they should cohere. That is, they
must collectively contribute to the furtherance of a higher-order goal, but they
need not interlock in the sense of directly meshing with the causal contributions
of others in accomplishing more proximal objectives.
Second, these new kinds of collaborative work often present new challenges
regarding the nature of joint action itself. Following Kirsh and Maglio (1994),
we believe action can be understood in terms of a pragmatic component, entail-
ing physical manipulation of aspects of the world in the pursuit of goals, and an
epistemic component, involving ‘work’ whose primary objective is not necessarily
advancing toward a goal state as such, but rather is best understood as an effort
to learn more about the nature of the situation in which an agent finds her-
self. And following Weick and his colleagues (e.g. Daft and Weick 1984; Weick
1995; Weick et al. 1995) we believe it’s useful to distinguish between action
undertaken in environments that are more concretely and objectively defined, i.e.
where inter-subjective agreement is, perhaps, close to universal, and action that
takes place in environments whose characteristics intrinsically depend on socially
constructed institutional facts (cf. Searle 1995; 2010). While nominally these two
dimensions (i.e. the epistemic vs. pragmatic and the concrete vs. socially con-
structed) are orthogonal, we suggest that whereas the archetypal forms of joint
intentionality take place in bounded action situations (Ostrom 2005) involving
concrete goals, physically mediated action plans, and a readily observable envi-
ronment, the new kinds of joint action mediated by collective intentionality often
occur in enacted environments (Daft and Weick 1984; Weick 1995; Weick et al.
2005) and involve epistemic and pragmatic actions (Kirsh and Maglio 1994)
oriented toward abstract or symbolic (i.e. less concretely defined) ends. It is these
two features in particular which point to the importance of external support
structures or ‘scaffolds’.
Technological and social scaffolds

The human capacities of joint and collective intentionality are part of a species-
wide, uniquely human psychological infrastructure that lies at the core of more
complex forms of cooperative social interactions. However, while basic, these
capacities need not be innate or simply maturational, in the sense of unfolding
in their form under their own biological accord. Instead, we take a Vygotskyan
perspective which accords a significant role for nurture in the development and
elaboration of all human forms of intentionality (Vygotsky 1978; Olson 1994;
Bruner 1997; Baltes et al. 2006; Sterelny 2012; Ansari 2012; Lende and Downey
2012; Tomasello 1999; 2014). The skills of joint and collective intentionality
come into existence only through an extended ontogeny which depends on the
developing child’s immersive participation in a collectively created and trans-
mitted environment suffused with cultural practices, artifacts, and symbols that
has been ‘ratcheted’ up (Tomasello 1999) by the cumulative effects of cultural
evolution. We are thus suspicious of classic ‘homuncular’ decompositions of the
human mind into discrete, nearly decomposable, and innately specified mental
modules (Anderson et al. 2012).
Rather, we are sympathetic to the view that many of the more complex forms
of human cognition are socially or technologically ‘scaffolded’ in that they rely
on, and actively incorporate, culturally constructed skills, practices, artifacts, and
other environmental support structures to complement our biologically more
basic cognitive representations and processes (Suchman 1987; Donald 1991;
Norman 1991; Hutchins 1995; Clark 1997; 2008; Logan 1997; Wertsch 1998;
Wilson 2004; Wilson and Clark 2008; Menary 2007; Dror and Harnad 2008;
Sutton 2010; Theiner 2011; Anderson et al. 2012; Kirsh 2013; Rowlands 2013).
For example, the development of logic, mathematics, and the scientific method
would be unthinkable without the creation, transmission, and skillful deploy-
ment of visually perspicuous symbolic representations such as written language,
diagrams, and specialized graphical notations (Goody 1977; Latour and Woolgar
1979; Latour 1986; Logan 1986; Olson 1994; Crosby 1997). More generally,
the material structure of linguistic vehicles (and their internalized encodings)
has recently been analyzed as a powerful cognitive tool that scaffolds individual
intentionality (Dennett 1993; 2000; Clark 1998; 2006; Roepstorff 2008). Here,
we draw attention to various ways in which language, tools, and shared cultural
practices scaffold joint and collective intentionality.
To begin with, language and other modes of symbolic representation provide
efficient tools for extending the ‘interaction space’ of joint actions (Clark 1996;
Tomasello 1999; 2008; 2014; Tylén et al. 2010; Fusaroli and Tylén 2012). Many
familiar stock examples of joint actions (e.g. walking or dancing together) are
face-to-face encounters in which interactants can draw on embodied, multisen-
sory mechanisms to help coordinate their movements, actions, and perspectives
(Goodwin 2000; Dale et al. 2013). Spoken and written language, diagrams, and
‘boundary objects’ remove this dependency on the immediate ‘here-and-now’ and
the (implicit) presumption of common knowledge, allowing people to coordinate
joint actions that are displaced in space and time and that involve interactions
crossing ‘epistemic boundaries’ (Star and Griesemer 1989; Carlile 2002; 2004).
Second, language contains an elaborated set of devices for sculpting and navi-
gating joint attentional and referential spaces (Tomasello 1999; 2008; Talmy
2000). For example, linguistic categories such as deictic markers, prepositions,
tense and aspect, and lexical choices that involve different levels of abstractness
can be used to convey different conceptualizations of a situation in subtle ways
that modulate joint attention and understanding. Diagrammatic modes of rep-
resentation (Crosby 1997), like boundary objects, play similar roles in enabling
people with very different knowledge, perspectives, or skills to effectively orient
problem solving efforts to common ends even when there is little overlap in their
respective knowledge or skills. These linguistic and diagrammatic representations
help to shape, constrain and drive along attention in both ‘real time’ interactions
(Sawyer 2007; Bjørndahl et al. 2014) and in diachronic and asynchronous inter-
actions (Star and Griesemer 1989; Carlile 2002; 2004), or in situations where the
problem domain itself is ill-structured or understanding otherwise provisional
(Simon 1977; Clark 1998).
Third, language and other symbolic representations facilitate the mutual align-
ment of expectations through the sharing of higher-order situation models and
joint action plans (Weick and Roberts 1993; Walsh 1995; Weick 1995; Picker-
ing and Garrod 2004; Weick et al. 2005; Roepstorff and Frith 2009; Sebanz
and Knoblich 2009; Kaplan 2011). The necessity of ‘being on the same page’
in terms of what tasks to perform, as well as how and with whom to coordi-
nate one’s actions, is a key determinant of the success or failure of collaborative
endeavors. Within the family of approaches collectively labeled as ‘team cogni-
tion’ (Fiore and Salas 2004; Cooke et al. 2007), several theoretical frameworks
have tried to render this intuitive concept more precise, and to measure its impact
on team processes and performance. For example, the formation of ‘team mental
models’ (Klimoski and Mohammed 1994; Mohammed et al. 2010), understood
as a shared set of convergent mental representations about the nature of the task,
team, equipment, and situation, has been invoked to explain how team mem-
bers interpret information in a similar manner, share expectations concerning
future events, and develop similar causal accounts for a situation. An alternative
approach to team cognition which breaks away from the dominant knowledge-
based, information-processing paradigm views team cognition as an emergent
feature that results from a history of interactions between team members (Cooke
et al. 2009). Anchored within the tradition of ecological psychology (Gibson
1966; 1979; Heft 2001) and dynamical systems thinking in cognitive science
(Spivey 2008; Chemero 2011), the ecological approach aims to put the focus
back on the impact of interactive team processes (vs. individual knowledge struc-
tures) and the self-organized (vs. routinized) nature of coordination dynamics,
especially in heterogeneous work groups whose structure needs to be continually
adapted in response to complex team-level events (Gorman et al. 2010a; Gorman
et al. 2010b; Cooke et al. 2013).
Finally, because the accretion of linguistic structure reflects multiple levels
of coordination dynamics which range from individual brains, bodies, dyads,
groups, to entire cultures (Coseriu 1974; Rączaszek-Leonardi and Kelso 2008;
Rączaszek-Leonardi 2010), language is a socio-cultural tool for a kind of ‘sense-
making’ which straddles the divide between situation and traditions (Linell 2009).
In each dialogical exchange, a person not only attends to a ‘significant’ other in a
specific context, but is attuned to a ‘generalized’ other in the sedimented forms
of socio-cultural practices, routines, and representations that transcend specific
situations (Mead 1934; Bakhtin 1986; Marková 2003). This dual-level struc-
ture of interpersonal dynamics and social sharedness has been called the ‘double-
dialogicality’ of language (Rommetveit 2003; Linell 2009). On the plane of
situated encounters, self and other contribute to a joint communicative project,
though typically with an asymmetrical distribution of communicative labor (e.g.
by asking a question, and having it answered). On the socio-historical plane, we
are both (socially distributed) ‘shareholders’ of a common language and culture
from which we collectively inherit, and into which we also reinvest (Rommetveit
2003). Both types of dialogical encounters are dynamically intertwined, mutually
sustaining coordinative processes that operate simultaneously, but evolve at dif-
ferent time-scales (Sawyer 2003; 2005). And importantly, there are potentially
multiple levels of double-dialogicality involved in any instance of sensemaking
as organizational and role-based (e.g. profession-based) ‘cultures’ and cultural
capital – in part defined by contingent logics of appropriateness – often play
critical roles in shaping instances of more localized coordination (Douglas 1986;
March 1994; Weick 1995; Bourdieu 1984).
Language and other symbol systems, shared cultures, and tools are all impor-
tant kinds of scaffolds, but they are by no means the only ones. As we shift atten-
tion to more complex forms of organization, scaffolding by means of complex
social practices becomes increasingly important. Of particular salience are more
stable, institutionalized instances of socio-material ensembles (McGrath et al.
2000; Orlikowski 2007; Pentland 2011), management, or organizational, con-
trol systems (Ouchi 1979; Eisenhardt 1985; Simons 1994), and sensemaking
processes (Weick 1995; Weick et al. 2005). These practices and structures emerge
out of the activities of individuals and groups, but are not reducible to them
(Sawyer 2004; 2005); they often have a durability that enables them to persist in
the face of substantial turnover of specific individuals and, perhaps more impor-
tantly, they enable groups to engage in kinds of action that would otherwise not
be possible. Much of what is sui generis about organizational action in its most
complex manifestations, we claim, stems directly from the scaffolding effects of
these social practices.
Socio-material ensembles (Hutchins, 1995; Orlikowski 2007; Pentland and
Feldman 2008; Pentland 2011; Leonardi 2011) can be understood, following
McGrath et al. (2000), in terms of coordination networks of members, tools, and
tasks. An analysis of ‘member–tool–task’ networks in groups includes six compo-
nents (Arrow et al. 1999; McGrath and Argote 2001): (a) member–member rela-
tions such as trust, hostility, or power; (b) task–task relations such as sequential
constraints on action or the development of routines; (c) tool–tool relations, which
include both ‘hardware’ tools (e.g. hammers, trucks, front desks) and ‘software’
tools (e.g. norms, scripts, representational media); (d) task–tool relations, which
specify which tools are required to complete certain tasks, (e) member–task rela-
tions, which indicate the division of labor among members; and (f) member–tool
relations, which specify how members perform their tasks. Coordination at the
organizational level – even at relatively modest levels of complexity – is often inti-
mately bound up with the elaboration and stabilization of these kinds of ‘member–
tool–task’ networks and the brokering of what Nelson and Winter (1982) termed
‘truces’ between individuals and factions within the organization characterized
by divergent goals and interests (see also Becker 2004). This is particularly true
in cases where individuals within the organization inhabit very different epistemic
worlds, where coordination relies on ‘boundary objects’ to span these epistemic
boundaries (Star and Griesemer 1989; Carlile 2002; 2004). And, they are criti-
cal for maintaining coordination, coherence, and collaboration over time as the
context or strategy evolves (Mintzberg et al. 1998).
Managerial, or organizational, control systems (Ouchi 1979; Eisenhardt 1985;
Simons 1994) are the formal and informal systems used by organizations to spec-
ify outputs, standard operating procedures, incentives, and the ‘ways things are
done’. Simons (1994) thus describes them as ‘levers of control’, emphasizing
the way that these meta-organizational processes can alter the way that organi-
zation’s more basic, ‘zero-order’ (Winter 2003) production processes operate.
They can be explicit, as is the case with most performance management systems,
or implicit, as is the case when prior socialization into group norms, identities,
expectations, and values is used to channel individual actions toward ‘corporate’
(i.e. collective) ends (Ouchi 1979). Control systems provide more or less objec-
tive and well articulated standards against which behavior and results at the indi-
vidual or supra-individual can be measured, giving management the opportunity
to see how interventions in the ongoing flux of organizational activity affect the
operating characteristics of the organization (or parts thereof), and allowing indi-
viduals to self-organize their actions over time in light of how those actions will
eventually be evaluated by the organization.
Sensemaking processes (Weick 1995; Weick et al. 2005) involve the socially
mediated construction and interpretation of task environments that provide the
grounds of organizational action in situations where both goals and action plans
are abstractly defined. Sensemaking processes involve individuals creating, tell-
ing, and interpreting stories about what is happening and what should be done,
in order to create and advance understanding of what is happening and what is
being done by the organization qua organization. And, more to the point, it is
often through and in these ongoing conversationally mediated processes (Ford
and Ford 1995; Phillips et al. 2004; Hargadon and Bechky 2006; Lawrence and
Suddaby 2006; Sawyer 2007) that organizational actions and decisions are con-
stituted in many cases. Whereas more basic forms of organizational action might
involve individuals coming together to produce some tangible ends (e.g. a barn
raising), more complex forms of organizational action often involve abstractly
defined, intangible modes of actions (e.g. developing a strategy, launching a new
product line, conducting R&D). Likewise, the environments themselves in which
those actions occur are similarly abstract in the sense that competitors, markets,
and industries are best understood as the products of organizational cognition
(Porac et al. 1989; Reger and Huff 1993; Walsh 1995; Kaplan 2011).
Figure 9.1 The ‘Scaffolded Joint Action’ Model
Scaffolded joint action as a micro-foundation for

organizational learning
At the outset, we noted that organizational learning has often been defined
functionally in terms of the transformation of experience into new behavioral
repertoires. We can distinguish two main variants of organizational learning –
greenfield, where experience mediates the construction of new-to-the-world
capabilities and associated behavioral repertoires, and brownfield, where expe-
rience mediates the transformation of existing organizational capabilities and
repertoires6 – even if, in real world contexts, these are often entangled in complex
ways. Greenfield learning occurs when new organization-level behavioral reper-
toires are created, in either de novo or existing organizations; brownfield learning
occurs when changes are made to existing repertoires. The creation and modi-
fication of organizational routines and capabilities, then, constitute important
modes of organizational learning. The scaffolded joint action model, we argue,
constitutes a micro-foundation of organizational learning because it illuminates
the processes, mechanisms, and structures by which organizational routines and
capabilities are created or modified.
Scaffolded joint action enables individuals to engage in collaborative efforts
characterized by increasing temporal, spatial, and social distribution of activi-
ties; efforts that often are simultaneously characterized by increasingly abstractly
defined goals, plans and environments. These more complex modes of orga-
nizational action, we suggest, are made possible, and mediated, through (i)
socio-material ensembles, (ii) control systems, and (iii) sensemaking processes.
Together, these scaffolds help orchestrate complex pragmatic and epistemic oper-
ations (Kirsh and Maglio 1994) – an orchestration that is driven by the inten-
tion of exploiting judgment, insight and experience in the pursuit of opportunity
(Klein 2008; Augier and Teece 2009; Felin and Zenger 2009; Teece 2012; Foss
and Klein 2012). And they do this by enabling the kinds of patterned interac-
tions between individuals (and other elements of the organization) and canalized
behavioral repertoires that have long been taken as definitive of routines and capa-
bilities (Becker 2004; Vromen 2011; Eggers and Kaplan 2013).
Constructing socio-material ensembles and associated control systems is a
powerful way of establishing group level production systems (March and Simon
1958), which are, in a sense, higher-order partial plans for generating ‘corpo-
rate’ outputs. In this way, production systems comprise a new mode of planning
agency (Bratman 2014), scaled up from more basic forms of group collaboration
to more complex organizational architectures. As partial plans, they are far from
an algorithmic description of all the necessary and sufficient steps guaranteeing
the desired output. They are incomplete recipes – to be filled in at the appropri-
ate time, by individuals enacting specific roles in light of local circumstances and
based on their understanding of the organization’s goals, preferences, strategies
and identity (cf. King et al. 2010). And thus, their continual evolution (Nelson
and Winter 1982) is dependent on the ongoing processes of sensemaking that
constitute a fundamental element of organizational action. And it is precisely in
these experientially driven processes of capability construction and modification
that we have organizational learning.
Concluding thoughts
In summary, the transition from individual action through shared collaborative
activities to organizational action necessitates certain upgrades to the cognitive
architecture that enable agents to engage in those more complex forms of col-
laborative interaction.
The first upgrade, from individual to joint intentionality, is characterized,
mainly, by the addition of architectural elements that enable the distribution
of work across individuals and over time (cf. Tomasello et al. 2005; Tomasello
1999; 2014; Bratman 1999a; 2014); a transition that sees the emergence of small
groups as functional units capable of jointly working toward some shared set of
ends in bounded environments. What is critical about having joint intentionality
is that it endows individuals with the ability to establish common ends, mesh their
actions in goal-dependent ways, and operate effectively in shared environments.
The second upgrade, from joint to collective intentionality, is characterized by
the addition of elements that enable groups to operate in task environments that
are fundamentally socially enacted and abstract in nature (Daft and Weick 1984;
Weick 1995) and which involve the combined contributions of individuals who
may share little, if any, domain-specific knowledge, skills, or expertise (Conner
and Prahalad 1996; Hsieh et al. 2007). What is critical about having collective
intentionality is that it enables integration and complementarity amongst indi-
viduals who may have little understanding of either the collective ends towards
which their efforts are oriented, or the ways in which their individual efforts are
yoked in pursuit of those ends.
The third upgrade, which enables full-blown forms of organizational action,
heavily relies on a variety of scaffolds – social, technological, and cultural – which
help to structure, coordinate, and control shared collaborative activities. They do
this by permitting the kinds of patterned interactions between individuals (and
other elements of the organization) and canalized behavioral repertoires that have
long been taken as definitive of routines and capabilities (Becker 2004; Vromen
2011; Eggers and Kaplan 2013). Taken together, these upgrades take us from
the stag hunt archetype of collaborative joint action (Tomasello 2012) to an
archetype of twenty-first-century knowledge work (Powell and Snellman 2004).
Organizational learning, on this account, involves, first, orchestrating people,
artifacts and processes into complex socio-material ensembles (Hutchins 1995;
Orlikowski 2007; Pentland 2011), with their associated control systems and sen-
semaking processes, towards achieving ends that require broad and sustained
collaborative efforts if they are to be realized; and second, the evolution of such
systems in light of subsequent experience in processes dependent on sensemaking
and deliberative problem solving conditioned by shared intentionality.
In sum, what we suggest is that organizational routines and capabilities, which
constitute an important mode of organizational learning, can be profitably
understood through the lens of our scaffolded joint action model.
Notes
1 It is sometimes argued that capabilities are composed of routines (e.g. Winter
2003), with the implication that an organization’s capacity to engage in more com-
plex lines of action is built up from inventories of more basic building blocks,
assembled hierarchically. In practice, however, the line distinguishing a routine
from a capability is often vague and hard to define with any rigor or consistency
(Pentland and Feldman 2005); just how these constructs are operationalized in
empirical research often depends on the questions of interest to the researcher.
2 This is not to suggest that these are the only causally relevant factors. There are
good reasons, as Huber (1991) and Simon (1991) well noted, for understanding
some aspects of fundamental organizational learning in terms of what is going on
at the individual level (see also related discussions in Felin and Hesterly 2007; Felin
2012; Barney and Felin 2013). At the same time, there are clearly things like trans-
active memory systems (Wegner 1986; Ren and Argote 2011; Theiner 2013) that
exist at the supra-individual level, but that are not exactly a routine or capability,
either.
3 For an argument against the necessity of the ‘common knowledge’ condition, see
Blomberg (submitted).
4 Our ordinary locution of ‘intention’ is often ambiguous between goals and inten-
tions in the narrower sense. But as Bratman (1984) pointed out, intentions are
subject to more stringent rational constraints than goals. Whereas an agent can
rationally have two goals that she knows cannot both be attained, she cannot
rationally intend or plan to produce two outcomes that she knows to be mutually
incompatible (cf. Velleman 1997).
5 Drucker (1993) argued that our society is, in many ways, a society of organiza-
tions. In saying this, he was suggesting two things. First, that much of what gets
done in our society is accomplished in, and mediated by, organizations. Second,
that individuals in our society often are enmeshed in many different organizations
simultaneously – in their work, their social lives, and in their civic and community
dealings.
6 The distinction between greenfield and brownfield original derives from discussions
of the built environment, where greenfield projects are those built in previously
undeveloped areas and brownfield projects entail redeveloping an existing develop-
ment for new use. In the management literature, this distinction has been used,
for example, to distinguish mode of entry by multinationals in new markets, with
greenfield entry referring to entry via the establishment of a new organization in
the market whereas brownfield entry entails acquiring an existing business as the
way for the multinational to enter the market (e.g. Meyer and Estrin 2001). Our
use of these terms borrows this basic metaphor and applies it to notion of organi-
zational capabilities and behavioral repertoires.
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10 Scaffolding memory
Themes, taxonomies, puzzles1
John Sutton
Introduction: scaffolding memory

We must learn to remember the particular events and experiences in our past.
Infants have capacities to imitate and repeat, to know what to expect and what
usually happens in specific contexts, and to remember isolated episodes (Bauer
2007). Building on these capacities, young children gradually gain the ability to
locate specific past actions and experiences in time, and to understand them in
terms of their causal, emotional, or narrative relations to other events (Nelson
and Fivush 2004). Typically, autobiographical remembering of this more sophis-
ticated form does not emerge until the child is 4 or 5 years old, and richer forms
continue to develop throughout childhood, to such an extent that it can be seen
as a social-cultural skill (Fivush 2011). Longitudinal studies increasingly reveal
a range of individual and cultural differences and trajectories through adoles-
cence and early adulthood in the forms and contents of the personal narratives
that people spontaneously recall when remembering their past (Markowitsch and
Welzer 2009; Reese 2009; Fivush et al. 2011; Reese et al. 2011).
Like other significant skills, learning to remember the personal past is a chal-
lenging and multifaceted process. The child must keep in mind (and forge
links between) objects and events that are no longer present and, on some
views, must come to grasp the structure of time and the temporal asymmetry
of actions and events (Campbell 1997; Hoerl 1999; Sutton 2002). Alongside
other components involved in the development of the sense of self in time
(Moore and Lemon 2001; Reese 2002; Howe 2011), social interaction may
be a vital factor in the development of autobiographical memory as parents
or caregivers and children come to achieve together and maintain a form of
joint attention to particular past events (Hoerl and McCormack 2005; Sutton
2007). Because children thus learn to remember in specific dynamic contexts,
developmental psychologists often use the metaphor of ‘scaffolding’ to describe
the interactive support relations involved. In this chapter I critically assess the
concept of scaffolding as it applies to human memory, drawing selectively on
its applications throughout education and the learning sciences, developmental
psychology, and theories of situated and distributed cognition. After a brief,
big-picture overview of some central uses and definitions of the notion of
188 John Sutton
scaffolding in historical and contemporary literature, I offer three related tax-
onomies of forms of scaffolding, seeking to clarify its domains and its dimen-
sions. In the fourth and fifth sections I then pick out two sets of puzzles about
or problems for contemporary accounts of scaffolding in the philosophy and
sciences of memory. The chapter is aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience
interested in processes of learning, teaching, and apprenticeship as they apply
to the study of memory. A natural next step would then be the application of
these theoretical concerns to empirical work of various kinds in the field, from
ethnographic to experimental contexts.
One helpful initial account of scaffolding comes from Patricia Greenfield, who
describes the metaphor as ‘the basis for a theoretical model of the teacher in
informal education’ (Greenfield 1984, p. 118). Explicitly anchoring her usage in
its source domain, Greenfield suggests that the scaffold
has five characteristics: it provides a support; it functions as a tool; it extends

the range of the worker; it allows the worker to accomplish a task not oth-
erwise possible; and it is used selectively to aid the worker where needed.
(Greenfield 1984, p. 118)
In his book Being There, which brought the concept to wider audiences across
the cognitive sciences, Andy Clark identified scaffolding as an external structure
used by complex systems like us ‘to mold and orchestrate behavior’ in adaptive
or strategic ways (1997, p. 32). In addition to the physical environment, Clark
identified public language and culture as particularly ‘advanced forms of exter-
nal scaffolding’ by which humans manage ‘to squeeze maximum coherence and
utility from fundamentally short-sighted, special-purpose, internally fragmented
minds’ like ours (p. 33): in the picture of our mental lives which Clark outlined as
hybrid or distributed processes spread across brain, body and world, the intuitive
notion of scaffolding included both social and environmental support, and also
the enabling and constraining presence of, for example, ‘institutions, the inner
economy of emotional response, and the various phenomena relating to group or
collective intelligence’ (pp. 33, 46, and passim).
These are deliberately broad accounts of ‘scaffolding’. It is natural to ask if
they are too inclusive. Roy Pea begins a helpful historical and conceptual survey
by wondering if
the concept of scaffolding has become so broad in its meanings in the field
of educational research and the learning sciences that it has become unclear
in its significance. Perhaps the field has put too much of a burden on the
term, and we need a more differentiated ontology to make progress. Perhaps
scaffolding has become a proxy for any cultural practices associated with
advancing performance, knowledge, and skills whether social, material, or
reproducible patterns of interactivity (as in software systems) are involved.
This is surely too much complexity to take on at once.
(Pea 2004, p. 423; compare Stone 1998)
Scaffolding memory 189
The small steps towards such a differentiated ontology which I take here do
not involve firmly deciding whether the concept of scaffolding remains merely a
metaphor or can be constrained sufficiently to be itself a useful theoretical term.
In lieu of the systematic exercise in historical epistemology which that project
would require, here I suggest only that the concept is still doing productive work
across the disciplines. In particular, some natural problems about the ways it is
currently applied have important implications that are worth considering afresh.
Consider immediate implications from the source domain. Scaffolding is, in
general, not itself part of the building. Rather, it is when operating successfully,
merely temporary, to be dispensed with at the appropriate stage of development.
Use of the metaphor thus forces us to be clear about our unit of analysis. In
studying psychological processes like remembering, can we and should we always
identify the single biological organism as the central construction around which
scaffolding arises? When we do justice to the extraordinary diversity and com-
plexity of forms of scaffolding which themselves morph and shift at many distinc-
tive timescales, what sorts of individuals or embodied minds will we identify there
behind the scaffolds? I suggest that these are apt questions to ask at a time when
the need to study interactivity over time in various kinds of collaborative, joint,
or situated contexts or situations has never been felt so strongly, or its challenges
appeared so glaring.
Scaffolding: cultural and developmental psychology

In 1976, building on studies of joint visual attention between mothers and
infants (Scaife and Bruner 1975), Jerome Bruner and colleagues described an
experiment on joint problem-solving through which they identified a number
of ‘scaffolding functions’ played by a tutor (Wood et al. 1976). Scaffolding pro-
cesses in general, they suggested, involve ‘the adult “controlling” those elements
of the task that are initially beyond the learner’s capacity’: beyond the immediate
completion of the task, this process can over time ‘result, eventually, in develop-
ment of task competence by the learner at a pace that would far outstrip his [sic]
unassisted efforts’ (1976, p. 90). In particular, Wood and colleagues catalogued
ways that tutors scaffold the young problem solvers’ interest and motivation,
emotions, attention, and perception of salience. They can channel the learner’s
cognition and action, reducing the available degrees of freedom or setting spe-
cific constraints on task sequencing; focus and direct the child’s pursuit of the
activity and the goal, often through a timely ‘deployment of zest and sympathy’;
and also intervene, verbally instruct, or directly model the requisite action, often
in an idealized format (1976, p. 98).
Bruner’s interest in both verbal and non-verbal forms of instruction as cogni-
tive technologies owed much to the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky
(Boden 2006, p. 311). The discovery and creative reinterpretation of Vygotsky’s
work over the second half of the twentieth century would be the central part of
a full scholarly history of the idea of scaffolding (see Van der Veer and Valsiner
1992; Wertsch and Tulviste 1992; Bakhurst 2007; Caporael et al. 2014).The
190 John Sutton
concept of Vygotsky’s which most directly fed these movements in developmen-
tal psychology and education was the ‘zone of proximal development’ or ZPD:
this is the gap or space between what the learner can do alone, and what she
can achieve ‘under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers’
(Vygotsky 1978, p. 86; Cole 1985). Vygotsky had also studied and theorized
memory extensively, arguing that more basic memory capacities are entirely
transformed over the course of development by our interactions with external
psychological tools, those ‘mediational means’ by which we appropriate culture
as we master the social practices of employing technologies and artifacts effec-
tively (1978, pp. 38–57; Wertsch 1988). Even simple sociotechnical operations
such as tying a knot or marking a stick as a reminder ‘change the psychological
structure of the memory process’ in that they ‘extend the operation of memory
beyond the biological dimensions of the human nervous system and permit it to
incorporate artificial, or self-generated, stimuli’ (1978, p. 39; see also Rowlands
1999, Menary 2007). Flourishing multidisciplinary research in the 1980s and
1990s put such ideas to work in ambitious cross-cultural field studies and inno-
vative theory across cultural psychology, education, and anthropology. In tradi-
tions deeply attentive to the cognitive and affective effects of power and gender,
researchers in these fields came to adopt the labels ‘cultural-historical activity
theory’ and ‘situated cognition’ (Rogoff and Lave 1984; Rogoff 1990; 2003;
Chaikin and Lave 1993; Scribner 1997; Lave 2011). The idea of scaffolding
found a particularly productive home in developmental and lifespan psychology:
Katherine Nelson, for example, moved from studies of language and narrative
development towards a social-interactionist approach to autobiographical mem-
ory (Nelson 1993). As I described above, on such views discussions about shared
past experiences between parent and child can scaffold joint attention to past
events, so that the child gradually comes to think and talk spontaneously about
both personal and shared experiences. Specific features of the interaction sculpt
the form as well as the content of the child’s own developing memory (Reese
et al. 1993; Nelson and Fivush 2000).
In many respects, through to at least the mid-1990s, these lines of work
remained at a distance from the individualist mainstream in cognitive science,
which still tended to treat contextual influences as mere input or triggers for
the real cognitive processing in the head. So both developmental and cultural
psychologists in these traditions, for the most part, remained silent on or hostile
to mainstream computational and representational theories of mind, which were
assumed to be irretrievably individualist. As a result, they did not at that period
add to their increasingly mature bodies of empirical work any extensive accounts
of the kinds of cognitive architectures which might be best shaped for incor-
porating or intensively coupling with external and social scaffolding. Nor did
they typically delineate potential mechanisms by which the nature and content
of interventions by parents and tutors might influence and enduringly transform
the child’s learning and performance in memory and problem solving (Sutton
2002). Arguably it took the influence of theorists who engaged more overtly and
critically with mainstream cognitive science to begin to bridge these gaps. Edwin
Hutchins’ Cognition in the Wild (1995) emerged, in part, out of the meeting
of cognitive anthropology with cultural psychology, but critically addressed the
individualist assumptions of computational psychology directly: along with work
on the dynamic development of motor control, Hutchins’ ambitious new vision
was a major influence on Clark’s Being There. By the early years of the twenty-first
century, ideas about embodied and distributed cognition and about extended
mind were more visible across cognitive scientific practice and theory. In the case
of memory research, they aligned with independent movements towards more
ecological studies of autobiographical remembering in context (Michaelian and
Sutton 2013). This lightning tour of the recent history of the contextual study
of cognition and memory now sets us up for a more focused analysis of the range
and application of the contemporary concept of scaffolding.
Scaffolding: domains and dimensions

First, we can confirm that the picture of scaffolding identified by Bruner and
colleagues still clearly animates increasingly mainstream research on many aspects
of cognitive development. In a study of executive functioning in preschool chil-
dren, for example, Bibok and colleagues operationalize scaffolding exactly along
the lines suggested by Wood and colleagues (1976): it is ‘the process by which
tutors help plan and organize the activity of children so that they can execute a
task that is beyond their current level of ability’ (Bibok et al. 2009, p. 18). This
is the broad consensus which I seek to explicate more precisely in what follows,
by offering a series of taxonomies of the concept’s domains of application. But
first, for completeness, it is worth briefly mentioning two distinct notions of scaf-
folding in other recent psychological literature so as to set them aside for current
purposes.
In the context of ‘the scaffolding theory of aging and cognition’ (Goh and Park
2009; Reuter-Lorenz and Park 2014), scaffolding is a form of neural compensa-
tion, specifically ‘the recruitment of additional circuitry that shores up declin-
ing [brain] structures whose functioning has become noisy, inefficient, or both’
(Park and Reuter-Lorenz 2009, p. 183). The use of ‘scaffolding’ in this frame-
work has interesting relations to the mainstream developmental concept, and
raises important questions in its own right: on another occasion, puzzles related
to those I discuss below might productively recur in connection with the notions
of cognitive reserve and compensation in work on aging and memory (Harris
et al. 2014). In contrast, a different account of scaffolding has been offered by
researchers in the psychology of automaticity and the ‘new unconscious’: for
Williams et al., ‘scaffolding’ is ‘the passive, natural process through which new
concepts are formed, especially in early childhood’: distinct ontogenetic and phy-
logenetic scaffolding processes link or blend our concepts and goals, ‘tether-
ing’ our thoughts ‘to the physical environment in which they occur’ (2009, pp.
1257–1258). Whatever the merits of the particular version of ‘embodied cog-
nition’ which Williams and colleagues defend, their borrowing of the concept
of ‘scaffolding’ is unhelpful: Niedenthal and Alibali (2009) rightly argue that it
192 John Sutton
should not be taken to displace the ‘quite different’ and much more active notion
of scaffolding available in the Vygotskyan developmental tradition.
With the relevant notion of scaffolding in mind, we can taxonomise its forms
in at least three ways – by domain, by resource, and by timescale: roughly, by
asking in turn what capacity is scaffolded, what is scaffolding it, and at what rate
the resulting learning and transformation occurs. There are of course other ways
to categorize the relevant phenomena, for example by examining variations in
the nature of the learner, and extending the study of the scaffolding of individu-
als to the case of teams and groups. The point of all such taxonomies is to seek
more differentiated ontologies, or to be in a position then to study the particular
ways the notion might apply in specific contexts. First, while my focus here is on
scaffolding memory, many other cognitive and affective capacities and processes
can be supported in relevantly similar ways. Current research addresses scaffold-
ing, for example, in the development of motor control, language and narrative
abilities, problem-solving, or skills involving executive control such as planning
and attention-switching. This taxonomy by cognitive domain is perhaps the least
theoretically significant: but making it explicit allows us to ask how distinctive
forms of scaffolding operate in the development of such different cognitive pro-
cesses. It can also remind us that in practice remembering is rarely isolated or
neatly encapsulated, and also to examine its links with forms of scaffolding in
other domains. Memory is involved in various ways, for example, in the operation
of the various forms of ‘visual scaffolding’ which can assist design processes such
as sketching or modelling in art, graphics, or architecture (Clark 2005; Murphy
2005; Schmidt et al. 2007). Socially- or materially supported techniques, strate-
gies, or technologies in such areas of course rely on skilled expert use, which
shows up in the ability swiftly to access appropriate information from long-term
memory (Ericsson and Kintsch 1995; Geeves et al. 2008). And some of the most
important and under-studied forms of scaffolding occur in affective domains: our
moods and emotions are constantly shaped, given precision or flavor, by way of
social uptake, culturally specific caring practices, or self-induced rituals and habits
such as listening to music, going to a particular place, or just having another cof-
fee (Griffiths and Scarantino 2009; Greenwood 2013; Colombetti and Krueger
(in press). Such scaffolded forms of emotion regulation also involve memory of
various kinds, including embodied memories of action as well as explicit autobio-
graphical memories (Sutton and Williamson 2014).
A second way to taxonomise forms of scaffolding is to look at its agents or
mediators, at the particular kinds of construction which support growth and
development. Vygotsky rightly sought to look at social and material or technical
forms of scaffolding together, and as our modern disciplines catch up with the
possibilities for interaction studies we need to knit these projects together again
(Enfield and Levinson 2006; Streeck et al. 2011). At the broadest level, we can
distinguish scaffolding by other people and scaffolding by the inanimate world
(Sutton 2006): but each category of course includes, at a finer grain, a range of
quite distinct resources which can extend, assist, and transform cognitive and
memory capacities.
Social scaffolding, first, includes parent–child or caregiver–child interaction:
but even within families, the relevant support often spreads across siblings and
across generations (Halbwachs 1950/1980; Bohanek et al. 2006; Shore 2009,
Miller and Fung 2012). The category of collaborative remembering includes
many cases beyond the more asymmetric adult–child contexts typically studied in
developmental psychology: friends and couples, work colleagues and team-mates,
people with shared enthusiasms or experiences constantly exchange and renegoti-
ate the meanings of past events (Sutton 2008a; Barnier et al. 2008).
But because people share memories in specific contexts, second, we need to
address the worldly aspects of the interconnected systems which compose ecolo-
gies of remembering. These include natural environmental resources such as the
regularities of the physical world, the geographical and ecological structures of
space and place, and of landscape and architecture, and the material properties
of objects (Ingold 2000). Together such ecological resources can form unique
topographies of remembrance for particular communities (Basso 1996; Whyte
2009; Wood 2013). Over the last 100,000 years or so, as a species we have also
increasingly relied on more sophisticated and varied artifacts and technologies
which we construct and recruit for cognitive, mnemonic, and social purposes
(Donald 1990; Malafouris 2013). The capacity more reliably to transmit complex
skills such as those required for making and deploying a flexible array of tech-
nologies was a central development in the evolution of cognition, occurring not
because of any dramatic changes in our neural resources but because of gradual,
interconnected changes in the structures of our environments and the organiza-
tion of our social life (Sterelny 2012; Sutton 2013). Apprenticeship in skilled,
characteristically human expert activities was and remains a hybrid process involv-
ing both supervised and unsupervised learning regimes, both direct instruction
and the gradual pickup of lore, both formal demonstration and playful trial-and-
error experiment (Sterelny 2012). The properties of linguistic and other tags
and labels offer us further capacities, when necessary, to stabilize our thoughts
and tools, and to collectively reflect on and improve our props and scaffolds,
sharing or negotiating ideas and narrating possibilities, linking current concerns
to events long in the past or plans for increasingly distant futures (Clark 1996;
1998; Jackendoff 1996; Sutton 2002). As cultural and institutional scaffolding
systems expand, with an exponentially increasing array of larger, more hybrid
social forms involving distinctive distributions of labour and of cognitive profile,
we then create vast and interconnected forms of organizational scaffolding within
which a range of distinct coordination practices emerge (Christensen 2013; Gor-
don and Theiner, this volume, Chapter 9). Finally, many resources to support
memory and cognition which start out as external or technological can be trans-
formed into internalized systems of self-scaffolding. We co-opt architectures and
strategies from the external world which then allow us to carry out tasks without
present assistance, or to learn to learn better (Vygotsky 1978; Clark 1997; 1998;
Bickhard 2005; Mascolo 2005; Sutton 2006; 2010). As I discuss further below,
it may then look like the scaffolding has been wholly dismantled as the individual
operates unaided when, in fact, it has become internalized.
194 John Sutton
Note that even in listing these varied resources, it is clear that the scaffold-
ing for cognition and memory does not come in neatly separable natural and
cultural forms. Rather, both individually and collectively we create or at least
mold many of the most significant features of the world on which we then rely:
as a species, we have long adopted and adapted all kinds of natural resources
which are thereby transformed as we incorporate them into our cognitive and
social systems and practices (Clark 2003; Sutton 2008b). As Andy Clark puts
it, we humans create whole cascades of props and ‘surrogate situations’ which
allow us to ‘routinely exceed the apparent limits of our basic modes of animal
reason’: these systems of ‘technological and cultural props and scaffolds’ can be
seen as ‘extended cognitive physiologies’ reaching far ‘beyond the flesh’ (2005,
pp. 241–242). Typically we now remember past events, or simply re-enact well-
remembered practices, in settings which inextricably link social, ecological, and
technical resources alongside our neural and bodily capacities. The arrangements
of utensils and environmental supports for cooking, for example, involves both
‘the intelligent use of space’ (Kirsh 1995) and complex, socially- and culturally
embedded practices for working together with other people (D. Sutton 2006).
Likewise, when long-married couples remember their first meetings or the holi-
days they have taken together, or employ their shared memory skills to remember
when and where they should be in daily life, they typically rely on a range of
artifacts – diaries, notes, or new digital technologies – to support their collabora-
tive recall (Harris et al. 2014).
Having sketched taxonomies of the domains in which scaffolding operates, the
forms it takes, and the resources it involves, we can finally point to the range of
timescales on which these processes operate (compare Gauvain 2005; van Geert
and Steenbeek 2005). We have already seen that scaffoldings for memory and
cognition developed over an evolutionary or phylogenetic timescale, as we col-
lectively constructed unique kinds of cognitive niches (see also Menary 2014;
Wimsatt 2014). Then there are a range of cultural-historical timeframes, as
addressed by both archaeologists and historians, within which certain variations
and developments in technology and institutional practices are themselves best
seen as changes in human memory, rather than merely external influences on
basic or constant internal cognitive processes (Smail 2008; Sutton 2010; Tribble
and Keene 2011; Sutton and Keene forthcoming). Next, at the ontogenetic tim-
escale, the central place of scaffolding in the child’s development of the abilities
to remember, imagine, and plan has been discussed above. These processes do
not stop when childhood ends, and as I will argue further below scaffolding
should be seen in the context of the lifespan. Finally, at more compressed times-
cales, much cognitive scientific practice is devoted to the study of richly interac-
tive systems of scaffolding at the timescale of occurrent cognitive processes, as
the interanimating array of resources I have just sketched takes unique forms to
shape the content and form of specific cases of remembering.
A science of the scaffolded mind (Sterelny 2010) will operate across all of
these levels, types, and timescales of scaffolding, identifying the key dimensions
of variation in the ways that they relate and interact in distinctive contexts for
specific tasks. With this framework in mind, I move on to address, in the fourth
and fifth sections in turn, two related puzzles about the way that the notion of
scaffolding is deployed in contemporary memory theory.
Puzzle #1: must scaffolding fade? Internalization

and individualism
Because discussions of scaffolding have been anchored in developmental psychol-
ogy, there has naturally been a focus on what Vygotsky saw as ‘the distinguishing
feature of human psychology’: ‘the internalization of socially rooted and histori-
cally developed activities’ (1978, p. 57). What must first be achieved interperson-
ally, as a child plays or works with an adult, or employs a culturally embedded
sign or tool, is reconstructed and ‘transformed into an intrapersonal’ process.
After being unable to walk unaided, the child takes her first steps alone; after long
needing adult assistance to read, she will one day manage to do so on her own;
after talking about today’s shared events, she will later come spontaneously to
recall her past experiences in narrative sequence. Cognitive functions thus appear
‘first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level’ (p. 57). Vygotsky
himself was clear that these processes of internalization are complex and gradual,
and that the external form of activity often continues or ‘lasts forever’. But there
is a temptation, in noting the pervasive nature of internalization in development,
to think of scaffolding as temporary, and the developmental notion of ‘fading’
sometimes encourages us to think in terms of interpersonal capacities being at
some stage transferred complete, once and for all, into the learner’s head. For
example, Collins et al. argue that
Once the learner has a grasp of the target skill, the master reduces (or fades)
his [sic] participation, providing only limited hints, refinements, and feed-
back to the learner, who practices successively approximating smooth execu-
tion of the skill.
(1989, p. 456)
Discussing this use of the term ‘fading’, Roy Pea goes so far as to say that
‘such a dismantling mechanism’ is ‘an intrinsic component of the scaffolding
framework’ (2004, p. 431). His reasoning is that if a scaffold does not fade in this
way, there would be no clear distinction between scaffolding and the ‘much more
pervasive form of cognitive support’ that enables distributed cognition or distrib-
uted intelligence. Wondering whether a calculator which remains a fixed compo-
nent of problem-solving activity can still be called a scaffold, Pea suggests that we
need to distinguish the many activities enabled by new technologies which simply
could not be performed without ongoing computing support from the kind of
scaffolding that occurs in educational interactions between teacher and learner.
Some forms of cognitive support are ‘scaffolds-with-fading to be pulled down
and whisked away once the learner is able to perform as expected without their
use’, whereas others ‘serve in an ongoing way as part of a distributed intelligence
196 John Sutton
scientific workbench and as fundamental aides to the doing of science whose
fading is unnecessary and unproductive’ (2004, p. 442). These are interesting
suggestions, but I will argue that we do not need the sharp distinctions towards
which Pea is working here: neither between social scaffolding and technological
scaffolding, nor between tasks that require ongoing support and those which do
not, nor at a theoretical level between scaffolding and distributed cognition.
The danger of enforcing such sharp distinctions and, in particular, of taking
the fading or dismantling of scaffolding to be essential, is that we end up with
what might be called a deficit model of scaffolding in which scaffolds are only or
primarily needed and used when there is something missing in the learner. On
that picture, external resources are required when or as long there is something
lacking in the basic natural capacities, when the unsupported or naked system
cannot perform specific activities, perhaps because the autonomous capacity has
not yet developed, or because of some temporary obstacle or damage, or (at the
other end of the lifespan, for example) because of irremediable decline. Cer-
tainly, on some occasions and in some contexts individuals perform tasks alone.
In the case of memory, we are all aware of the richly sensory, emotionally sig-
nificant, often viscerally engaging phenomenology of remembering, which can
occur out of the blue in ways that do not seem to have a specific environmental
trigger (Berntsen 2009). Some people are perhaps relatively more ‘shielded’, as
we might say, from current stimuli and from social or ecological scaffolding, and
in many contexts will pursue their own train of thought or focus on a path of
deliberate recollection quite independently. Their cognitive capacities of course
developed in specific contexts, but the impact of the developmental trajectory
may be quite idiosyncratic. Yet no mature human memory system operates in iso-
lation, and it is more productive for explanatory purposes to think not of a sharp
distinction, but of a continuum between cases where scaffolding has been wholly
dismantled and cases where forms of scaffolding remain actively integrated into
ongoing processing. Or rather, cases of remembering may differ from each other
in many distinctive ways, along many distinct dimensions. The nature of the scaf-
folding may differ, involving unique balances of social, technological, and envi-
ronmental support. Variations in the mode and intensity of instruction shape the
pace and nature of learning. Support may differ in its duration, forming more
fleeting or more enduring systems, and in its reliability and the level or nature
of trust invested in it. It may be more or less easy to adapt to and use certain
forms of scaffolding in certain contexts, with some well-entrenched resources
being fully integrated into a well-practiced set of cognitive activities, while oth-
ers remain more opaque in use and require more explicit attention. By locating
specific cases in this kind of multidimensional space, we can turn an unproductive
dispute about the boundary between scaffolding and distributed cognition into
an empirically tractable set of projects, describing and exploring the characteristic
features and patterns of different kinds of scaffolded systems (Wilson and Clark
2009; Sterelny 2010; Sutton et al. 2010; Heersmink (in press).
From this alternative point of view, an exclusive focus on the fading of sup-
ports may then appear, as Pea later suspects, ‘as a somewhat Puritanical concept’
that is inappropriate not only ‘for modern times’ (Pea 2004, p. 443) but for
any full account of human cognition and memory. Looking for the independent
autonomous agent behind the scaffolding would be a residue of individualism.
In contrast, analyses of scaffolding can be productively allied (rather than con-
trasted) with work in the distributed cognition framework, in which mind and
memory remain hybrid across the lifespan (Sutton 2015). Just as there is often a
building or edifice that scaffolding supports, and which can be identified to some
extent by its physical boundaries, so there is a biological entity, the organism,
with its own characteristic patterns of activity which remain central across many
distinctive interactions: but while the organism’s brain traces one clearly located
spatiotemporal path, its mind is not bound within the skull.
A person who continues to need and employ scaffolding is not thereby incom-
plete or deficient, although of course there are characteristic trajectories and
transformations in the nature and use of distinct supporting resources over the
lifespan. An initial reading of the developmental literature on autobiographical
memory which I summarized earlier might suggest that once discussion about
the past between parent and child has given the child the capacity spontaneously
to recall events in the personal past, the interactive scaffolding comes to an end.
This is not the right lesson: instead, we should see adult memory capacities and
processes too as not only enabled by the mechanisms of our neural systems but
also fundamentally entangled with and reliant on social, environmental and cul-
tural resources.
To sum up, it is true that certain forms of scaffolding are sometimes disman-
tled, for certain individual learners or groups, and for certain tasks. But such
fading or dismantling is a cultural and/or individual achievement rather than
the revelation of our deepest, most basic or primitive cognitive capacities. For
the sciences of mind there is no reason to think that the essential level of analysis
should be the performance of the naked brain or the unscaffolded mind. Rather,
human psychology is most characteristically seen and experienced in our tangled,
dynamic interrelations with social, environmental and technological systems.
Instead of stripping away the scaffolding and the multiple influences in search of
something pristine beneath, the explanatory task is to document and trace the
many forms of scaffolding and the shifting cognitive constructions they support.
Puzzle #2: the cultural politics of elaboration

Examining potential implications of the concept of scaffolding, I have suggested
that the natural or biological capacities which underlie our rich mental lives are,
in the case of human psychology, already thoroughly scaffolded and culturally
mediated. In modern Western society, we can easily over-invest in more extreme
ideals by which self-sufficient and relatively detached individual minds are the
norm: we can push this thought further by wondering whether the ideal of
autonomous remembering by a solitary agent is something of a culturally spe-
cific liberal imposition, one result of the fact that most research in scientific psy-
chology is done both with Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic or
198 John Sutton
WEIRD subjects and participants (Henrich et al. 2010). Other attitudes to and
practices of cultural scaffolding for remembering, involving different attitudes to
biographical coherence and to the centrality of the autonomous self, are possible
and have been studied in detail in outstanding cross-cultural research (Leichtman
et al. 2003; Reese 2013; Wang 2013).
This very abstract concern can be put to work in a concrete research context.
A key distinction in developmental work on parental scaffolding of children’s
memory is that between more elaborative or generative interaction, when parents
talk about the past more richly and emotionally, and more repetitive, directive,
or pragmatic interaction in which parents for example simply continue to seek a
particular fact from the child (Reese et al. 1993). ‘Elaborative’ talk about the past
on the part of parents – which, in most studies, both mothers and fathers tend to
engage in with girls more than with boys – is in turn associated with earlier and
richer spontaneous autobiographical remembering on the part of the child (Fivush
1994). This robust result is just one achievement of the social-interactionist tradi-
tion which, as noted above, sees the emergence of autobiographical memory as
‘the outcome of a social cultural cognitive system, wherein different components
are being opened to experiences over time, wherein experiences vary over time
and context, and wherein individual histories determine how social and cognitive
sources are combined in varying ways’ (Nelson and Fivush 2004, p. 487). Cultural
as well as gender differences have been carefully tracked in these interactions: for
example, Caucasian American children’s spontaneous memories highlight the self
more, in general, than do those of Korean children (Mullen and Yi, 1995).
There are conceptual connections here to our first puzzle about the implica-
tions of the concept of scaffolding. It may appear as if these results suggest that
parental reminiscence style is the primary driving force behind the emergence of
autobiographical memory, in that the structure and content of the child’s early
thought and talk about the past is provided to a large degree by adults, whose
communicative actions simply form the scaffolding for such early memories. Per-
haps the scaffolding metaphor itself encourages the thought that the direction
of influence is one-way, from social and narrative context to the child’s autobio-
graphical memory capacities. But this may be a misleading interpretation of the
results. Interactions coded as elaborative in this research perhaps include at least
two distinct kinds. Sometimes the parent is primarily just offering or even impos-
ing detail and vivid content about a particular aspect of the past event. But this is
a distinct phenomenon from the related feature of contingency in conversation;
a contingent utterance is related in content to the conversational partner’s prior
utterance, whereas some elaborations may not be directly relevant to the specific
conversational context and thus not genuinely dialogical (Petra et al. 2005). A
better metaphor to catch the reciprocal and dynamic nature of these interactions
might be that of a spiral process, in which the child’s changing competence in
dialogue about the past itself in turn directly influences the parent’s reminiscence
style, encouraging the dynamic co-construction of richer narratives (Haden et al.
1997). It is as yet unclear how much the appropriate timing of responses and
turns matters in comparison with matching or linkage of appropriate content
between parent and child. If contingency of response is a distinctive factor in scaf-
folding the child’s capacities, artificial agents might be a useful comparison. We
want to allow for mutual influence between child and parent or between building
and scaffold, in which a dynamic co-construction of memories involves an active
child or learner. Again, there is an empirical spectrum of possibilities here, since
the relative influence of multiple concurrent processes can vary across cases (cf.
Griffiths and Stotz 2000; Sutton 2009). Both individual and cultural differences
are now being teased out in longitudinal research on memory development over
time by many leading researchers in these areas. The nature of emotional interac-
tion within collaborative memory will vary across cultures: while we know that
trust and attachment are vital mediating factors, there is, as yet, little research
connecting non-verbal and paralinguistic interaction between parent and child
with the analysis of conversations about the past (Larkina and Bauer 2010).
Concluding thoughts
To conclude, I have not suggested that we should jettison the metaphor of scaf-
folding, despite certain problematic tendencies or potential misinterpretations of
its standard uses in the sciences of learning and memory. Rather, I have argued
that sensitivity to the historical background of the concept can assist us in devel-
oping and sustaining rich, mixed-method studies of the diverse resources involved
in most real-life practices of remembering. Integrating the methods of experi-
mental psychology with immersive ethnographic projects, seeking to bridge the
gaps between the lab and the rest of the sociocultural world from both ends at
once, we can imagine research projects which address the interactions of distinct
forms and timescales of scaffolding all at once.
Note
1 Many thanks to the editors for their support and for extremely helpful comments
on an earlier draft. I presented talks on this topic at our Macquarie University
Memory Day in November 2012, and in a symposium on ‘Scaffolding Memory
Across the Lifespan’ organized by Amanda Barnier and Suparna Rajaram at SAR-
MAC X, the 10th conference of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and
Cognition, at Rotterdam in June 2013. Many thanks to the organizers and audi-
ences at those events, and for particularly helpful feedback or suggestions to David
Bakhurst, Patricia Bauer, Adam Congleton, Robyn Fivush, Tilmann Habermas,
Doris McIlwain, Elaine Reese, Karen Salmon, and Penny van Bergen. Puzzles
about the implications of the metaphor of scaffolding were put to me effectively
and productively by Eve Keller years ago at Chapel Hill. All my thinking on the
psychology of social memory is informed by my long-term collaboration with
Amanda Barnier and Celia Harris in our collective cognition research group.
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Part IV
Conclusion
11 The (social) context of memory
William Hirst
I remember distinctly the publication of the book Memory in Context, Context in

Memory in 1988, edited by Graham Davies and Donald Thomson. Like the pres-
ent volume, its title played on the word context. It suggested that the anthology
would examine both the effects of context on memory, but also how the study
of such effects reconfigures the way we conceive of memory. In this concluding
chapter, I want to consider both topics and the way the present volume addresses
these topics.
Context in memory
The meaning of ‘context’

Every act of memorizing and remembering occurs within a particular context.
Intuitively, we speak of an ‘object’ and its ‘context’. In much of the discourse
about memory and context, it is assumed that the two are separable. After all, it
seems that I can take an object out of its context and place it in another context
without doing damage to the object. A baseball can be placed on a table, grass,
chair, or even mid-air without the ball losing its essential quality of being a base-
ball. The context – the table, grass, chair, or air – changes, but the ball remains
the same.
When considering memorizing and remembering, the object can be thought
of as the material to be remembered, for instance, the list of words ‘HAT, BALL,
TILE’. Any features that have the potential to influence memorizing and remem-
bering, but that can be separated from the list, might be viewed as the context.
The color of the type in which the words are written might be a context for the
list, in that the color does not have to be remembered. Moreover, the color of the
type can change and the words in the list will remain the same. Similarly, if the list
is read aloud, the person doing the reading might also be viewed as the context.
John can read the list or Jane can. Again, the list remains the same.
To be sure, this treatment of context probably simplifies the matter. There is
the problem of specifying, a priori, what is the object and what is the context.
For instance, are TILE and HAT contextual features of BALL? As I use the term,
I would not treat them as context, at least for the way I have framed the memory
210 William Hirst
task, that is, memorizing HAT, BALL, TILE. Moreover, it could be argued that
the meaning of the object changes from one context to another, making the two
inextricably intertwined – inseparable. But to borrow from Frege (2000/1892),
it is the sense that the context alters, even as the referent remains the same. In
separating object from context, I am concerned, then, not with the way a memo-
rizer or rememberer may interpret or give meaning to list HAT, BALL, TILE,
but with the list itself. In adopting this perspective, I may be playing down some
complexity, but this treatment offers a good first swipe at one way context might
be interpreted when considering memorizing and remembering.
The importance of social context

The present volume’s discussion of context in memory differs from previous work,
such as Memory in Context, Context in Memory, in part because it focuses almost
exclusively on social context. The previous work concentrated its efforts on the
effects of environmental and semantic contexts. Different social contexts can have
a profound effect on memorizing and remembering. People might memorize a
story differently when they are in a study group than when they are listening to
a friend read a story. Moreover, people might recollect a story differently to their
mother, to their best friend, or to a stranger, for example, if the story contains
salacious content. In each instance, the original events remain the same, but what
is memorized and remembered changes as a function of the social context.
Why is it important to consider the way social context shapes memory? In large
part, the answer rests with the observation that humans are social creatures, and
the distinctive way social contexts shape their cognition and, in particular, their
memorizing and remembering, is a distinctive hallmark of their humanness. Not
to study the effects of social context is to avoid investigating this hallmark feature
of humanity. Although it is not a revelation to most social scientists that people
would not fully achieve the qualities deemed as ‘human’ if they were somehow
deprived of a social context in which to develop and to conduct their lives, psy-
chologists, especially cognitive psychologists, seem to mitigate its importance.
Cognitive psychologists are traditionally interested in a context-free memory. In
examining the effects of social context on memorizing and remembering, the
present volume, then, reflects what I have called elsewhere ‘the social turn’ in
memory research, a turn that had not been made when Memory in Context, Con-
text in Memory was published (Hirst and Rajaram 2014).
The cultural dimensions of social context

As I employ the concept, social context can be divided into at least two kinds.
The present volume engages both. First, there are what might be viewed as cul-
tural or socio-historical contexts. Although other primates have been shown to
have a culture, in the sense that they transmit knowledge and practices from one
generation to the next, human culture is much more complex than anything
else that might be viewed as cultural in the animal kingdom (Boesch 2012). It
The (social) context of memory 211
is important to emphasize, as Brescó and Wagoner do in Chapter 5, that culture
does not cause action, but is a means or resource for people performing action.
When considering memory, it does not cause people to remember some things
over another, but serves as a package of tools to aid and shape memorizing and
remembering.
In many of the chapters in this volume, culture is treated as shared beliefs and
attitudes, as well as accumulated knowledge. As such, it is conveyed through
books, schooling, movies, conversations, and a host of other ‘cultural artifacts’. In
many instances, individuals internalize the conveyed beliefs, attitudes, and knowl-
edge. Bartlett (1932) referred to the internal representations formed around this
accumulata of experience as schemata. Schemata, in turn, shape the what and how
of perception, interpretation, memorization and recollection, thereby modifying
existing schemata. The schemata people form and then employ when memo-
rizing and remembering can appropriately be viewed as social contexts because
(1) to a large extent, schemata are culturally specific, and (2) different people can
memorize and remember the same to-be-remembered object/material/event
with different schemata. As a result of the schemata they form, Swazi cattlemen
are good at remembering the prices of cattle sold at auction, but, presumably,
would struggle remembering the information imparted in a schoolroom in Cam-
bridge, England (Bartlett 1932); Aboriginal Australians who spend their life in
the stark environment of the Outback can remember the spatial layout of a new
stretch of countryside more easily than can Australians born and raised in Sydney
(Kearins 1981); and a teenage baseball fan may be able to remember a mind-
numbing quantity of baseball statistics, but will struggle to remember a simple
recitation of facts about Napoleon, as presented in his high school history class.
The role of culture (as shared beliefs) in shaping remembering figures in several
of the chapters in this volume. For instance, we suspect, as Brescó and Wagoner
suggested in Chapter 5, that the differences in the way Spaniards of different
political persuasions remembered newspaper articles about the Basque separat-
ist movement ETA reflect the internalization of cultural norms. Moreover, Páez
et al. in Chapter 7 examined whether people in different cultures possess the same
theories of history. Páez et al. engage this topic because the theories people have
of history should, in turn, influence what they remember about the historical past.
Another facet of culture figuring in several chapters is the practices promoted
by and maintained by a specific community. These often involve what might be
viewed as mnemonic practices. The average Western child of 10 years of age or
more will categorize a categorizable list of words if asked to memorize it, whereas
Kpelle, a community in the Ivory Coast, will tell stories around the words, with
one exception (Cole and Scribner 1974): the Kpelle will follow the Western
mode of categorizing if they have attended a Western-style school. Critically, the
different mnemonic practices of these two groups will lead them to remember
quite different aspects of the word lists. This example may seem insubstantial, in
that it involves something as seemingly irrelevant to everyday life as memorizing
a list of words, but it nicely illustrates that (1) mnemonic practices are culturally
specific, and (2) they can profoundly affect what and how people remember.
212 William Hirst
Mnemonic practices should not be considered the same as schemata, though
sometimes psychologists have treated practices as emerging from schemata. As
Gudehus noted in Chapter 6, many mnemonic practices are embodied. The ritual
of celebrating Christ’s passion through the Stations of the Cross involves move-
ment from one depiction to another and genuflection at each station. There are
pictorial representations, to be sure, which may or may not become internalized,
but there are also bodily practices. Other practices are not so obviously embod-
ied. Gordon and Theiner, in Chapter 9, underscore that organizational learn-
ing involves the establishment of mnemonic practices within an organization. In
many instances, it would be difficult to view these as embodied.
Whether embodied or not, culturally specific mnemonic practices dominate
one’s life, again a point Gordon and Theiner make. Something as omnipres-
ent as writing, the use of calendars, and the current reliance on the Internet, to
name just a few, involve mnemonic practices built around mnemonic technol-
ogy. Indeed, the use of culturally specific mnemonic practices is so much part of
everyday life that few people would view them as a context in which memorizing
and remembering occurs. But, different practices can be applied to the same to-
be-remembered object. Think of the way different countries commemorate War
World II (Winter 1998). Clearly, the commemorative practices of Germans and
Japanese, for instance, differ from those of the British or Americans, though the
object to be remembered, the war, remains the same.
Interestingly, a central question, one raised and trenchantly discussed by Gude-
hus and touched on by Stone, Gordon and Theiner, and Brescó and Wagoner,
concerns the transmission of memories, especially from one generation to the next.
Here the emphasis is not on how context shapes memories within an individual,
but also on how it can shape memories between individuals. Gudehus referred to
the study of this transmission as Tradierungsforschung. Here also context, specifi-
cally, cultural context, plays a large role. As the many chapters in this volume make
clear, when studying the transmission of memories researchers have to consider
institutional or organizational structures, material culture, and the distinctive atti-
tudes and beliefs of each generation. This point is brought into relief in Gudehus’s
review of the literature relevant to Tradierungsforschung. He emphasized that the
word transmission may not fully capture what occurs, in that the story of one gen-
eration is more accurately described as appropriated by younger generations rather
than transferred to that generation. That is, the younger generation transforms
another person’s story into their own story. Although the process of this appro-
priation is no doubt complex, Gudehus correctly underscored that the transmis-
sion across generations is of low fidelity, in part, because the context in which each
generation remembers differs. One might borrow from Bartlett (1932) and state
that each generation has its own schemata. As the chapters in the present volume
nicely underscore, one might give this more weight by considering the distinctive
ways different groups narrate stories, the political and social pressures that bear
on what a group wants to tell about the past and what is permissible to tell about
the past, and the organizational structure that promotes and maintains practices
of remembering and narrating, to name a few.
Social interactions as social context
The influence of culture, in all its many aspects, tends to be a permanent, or at
least a long-lasting feature of the social environment in which memorizing and
remembering takes place. But social context includes much more than the social
artifacts and practices associated with a particular culture, or community. Context
also includes the daily social interactions people participate in. Social interactions
may be shaped by culture, and, in turn, reshape culture, but they should not be
subsumed solely under the cultural umbrella. The complex exchanges that my
partner and I engage in as we attempt to fix the plumbing under the kitchen sink
may reflect the culture we were raised in, to an extent, in that culture specifies,
for instance, when it is or is not appropriate to argue about how to proceed (e.g.,
possible when the two of us are alone, not possible when the neighbor is present).
Nevertheless, it would be hard to reduce all of what unfolds in our exchange to
culture. The argument we may or may not be engaged in is best thought of as a
social interaction pure and simple. As such, it is a transient communicative ges-
ture aimed at conveying to another the communicator’s intentions and feelings.
What makes social interactions of this kind so interesting is that, as Tomasello
(2014) articulates, and Gordon and Theiner in Chapter 9 underscored, sensitiv-
ity to them begins quite early in development. Indeed, the claim of these scholars
is that this incredible sensitivity to the social interactions people have with each
other is one of those distinctive hallmarks of the human species we have already
alluded to.
How does this distinctive hallmark play a role in memorizing and remember-
ing? Gordon and Theiner explored the way people move from individual to joint
activity, underscoring that joint activity ‘requires a special kind of collective or
“we” intentionality that cannot be identified with the kind of intentionality that
is required to perform individual actions’ (p. 000). Specifically, when two people
undertake a joint activity, they must form a joint goal and a shared intention to
achieve that goal together. Thus, when joint activity is the joint recollection of a
shared past event, there must be agreement about this goal, as well as the inten-
tion to achieve this goal together. Without these basic principles at work, people
would be working at cross-purposes. People can only negotiate these shared goals
and intentions through their sensitivity to social interaction.
Perhaps the most prevalent form of social interaction is the conversations peo-
ple have about the past. Only humans have the level of linguistic ability that makes
detailed conversations about the past possible. Moreover, although other species
may convey information, as bees do with each other, only humans do so with the
intention of conveying to another information about the past. Finally, the habit
of people to recollect to another a memory about a shared past is undoubtedly
also uniquely human. Bees may tell each other about where to locate pollen, but
they do not sit around their hive reminiscing about ‘this one time when they
found a huge field of wildflowers’.
Why would people make the effort to talk to another person about something
that the listener already knows about? Epistemic concerns might motivate some
214 William Hirst
joint recollection, as one person seeks the confirmation of another person that
her recollections are accurate. But perhaps more interestingly, joint recollection
also serves social purposes. When a couple reminisces about their first date, they
are not seeking epistemic confirmation, but building an increased sense of inti-
macy or, to put it another way, they are creating a stronger sense of ‘we-ness’.
Many of the chapters in this volume explore the ways conversation can serve as a
social context for memorizing and remembering. Sutton, in Chapter 10, discusses
collaborative remembering as a means of fostering development, whereas Brescó
and Wagoner, Gudehus, and Gordon and Theiner, in their respective chapters,
all discuss the role of conversations in remembering. Bietti, in Chapter 8, moves
beyond the verbal content of a conversation and examines gestures, probing how
gestures are as important in the joint activity of conversational remembering as
the words themselves. Stone, in Chapter 3, examines how the failure to mention
a shared event from the past will also affect subsequent remembering, that is, he
explores the role of conversational silences.
What each chapter demonstrates in its own way is that language and, in par-
ticular, conversations, shape what both the speaker and listener remember. As
noted when discussing culture, it is best to view language, or conversations,
as a means or resource for people when memorizing and/or remembering. In
many instances, the conversation can serve to promote remembering. Sutton,
in Chapter 10, underscores this point by treating conversations as a means of
scaffolding remembering. Gordon and Theiner, in Chapter 9, offer a similar
point, emphasizing that ‘language and other modes of symbolic representation
provide efficient tools for extending the “interaction space” of joint actions’
(p. 169). In Chapter 8, Bietti describes a detailed analysis of several conversa-
tions among friends of a shared past event, underscoring how the context of the
remembering – for instance, whether or not there were photographs present –
shapes what is remembered and how it is remembered. With respect to the latter
concern, Bietti stresses that one must consider not just what is said, but also the
bodily actions of the participants. The social context for Bietti takes on a mate-
rial, embodied aspect.
Finally, Stone, in Chapter 3, discusses how the selective nature of conversa-
tional remembering might not simply reinforce mentioned recollections among
conversational participants, but induce forgetting as well. Interestingly, he under-
scores the social nature of the effects of listening on memory in the work he
reviews. This work shows that induced forgetting is much more likely to occur if
the listener is socially related to the speaker, for instance, if they are students at the
same school. One must consider the social relationship among individuals when
considering the effects of social interactions, not just the cognitive consequences.
General observation
I have often wondered how much people could remember if remembering
truly occurred in a social vacuum. Of course, such a situation can never be
realized. Indeed, an overarching theme that runs through most, if not all, the
chapters – one appropriate to a book on context in memory – is that memorizing
and remembering rarely, if ever, entail acts that are not supported in some way or
other by the outside world. That is, memorizing and remembering involves scaf-
folding. Reviewing the different ways scaffolding has been conceptualized, Sut-
ton, in Chapter 10, offers an excellent finish to this book. Social context provides
a powerful means of scaffolding memory.
Of course, students of memory do not need this volume to prove the point
that context plays a major role in memory. What the present collection of papers
offers is an insight into what is entailed if one takes context seriously. Even if
one focuses on social context, the range of what must be considered is daunting.
One of the reasons why experimental psychologists have eschewed the study of
context – and have sought out a context-free memory – is that it seems as if there
would be no end to the analysis of different contexts. Everything seems to mat-
ter, and hence, everything needs to be studied. The range of possible scaffolds is
large indeed. The present volume does not directly address this concern, but it
does show that the exclusion of social context in studies of memory amounts to
neglecting a host of important factors. More importantly, the present volume is
a sustained argument that, by considering the role of context, scholars can gain
substantial insight into human memory.
Memory in context
That there is no such thing as a context-free memory may be one of the first
things one concludes when studying context in memory. But there are other
consequences to taking context seriously. Taking context seriously fundamentally
alters the way in which students of memory think about memory and about what
they need to study when investigating memory. One distinctive characteristic of
the chapters in this volume, at least for someone trained in experimental psychol-
ogy, is that the chapters do not attempt to study the effects of social context on
memorizing and remembering by using fairly stripped down material, such as
word lists. The chapters are almost exclusively about autobiographical memo-
ries, national memories and, in the case of Gordon and Theiner, organizational
memory. In a way, if you are to study the effect of social context on memory, you
will need to study memorizing and remembering in real world settings.
The result yields incredibly rich lines of research. Brown et al., in Chapter 2,
examine autobiographical memory in individuals suffering from PTSD, empha-
sizing the role self-identity plays in shaping the memories people hold of trauma
and, in turn, the effect of these memories on self-identity. Stone, in Chapter 3,
reviews the role silence plays in reshaping autobiographical memories, depart-
ing from most of the papers in this volume by examining not remembering, but
forgetting. Dumas and Luminet, in Chapter 4, contrast two types of memories:
flashbulb memories and eyewitness memories. Although the contexts of the two
are different, there are also striking similarities; for example, both involve emo-
tional reactions on the part of the rememberer. Dumas and Luminet explore both
their similarities and differences.
216 William Hirst
Interestingly, although Dumas and Luminet do not stress this point, one dif-
ference between flashbulb memories and eyewitness memories is that the former
often involve public events of national importance. The line between autobio-
graphical memories and national memories is not always sharp. Páez et al., in
Chapter 7, look specifically at national memories, as noted, memories associated
with the political movement ETA. They also find that, as context differs, the way
one remembers reports of nationally relevant events also changes.
The overarching impression one gets after reading this book is that this
needed volume is not really about memory and context – or even contextualizing
memory – rather it is about memory in everyday life, which, after all, is the topic
any serious student of memory should ultimately be interested in. I suspect that
most researchers would agree that memorizing and remembering always occurs
within a specific context. I am less clear that they would conclude from this that
the context for studying memory is memory in context. By examining memory
in context, in a variety of settings, the present volume underscores the substan-
tial progress students of memory can make in understanding memorizing and
remembering as it unfolds in everyday life.
References
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Boesch, C. (2012). From material to symbolic culture: culture in primates. In J.
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Cole, M. & Scribner, S. (1974). Culture and thought: A psychological introduction.
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Index
Abelson, R.P. 82 Boll, Friedhelm 87–8

action plans 158–9 Bourdieu, Pierre 82, 91
Alibali, M.W. 191–2 Bratman, M. 157–164, 174
anchoring process 72 Brewin, C.R. 14
appropriation 91–2, 97 Brown, A.D. 3, 14–7, 215
attentional tunneling 47 Brown, J.M. 37, 51, 57
Austin, John: A Plea for Excuses 80 Bruner, Jerome 71, 80, 128, 166, 189,
autobiographical memory/remembering 191
127–49, 187, 191, 197, 198, 215; Bryant, R.A. 14, 15
and body posture 129, 132, 148; Burgermeister, N. 89
embodied nature of 127–9; and Burke, Peter 95
episodic memory 127; and eye-
gaze direction 132, 136, 141, 142, Carlyle, T. 110
143, 144, 147, 148; and gestures Centrality of Event Scale (CES) 14
128–9, 135–6, 139–42, 145–8; group children’s memory: parental scaffolding
remembering with artifacts 133–7; 187, 190, 193, 197–9, 198
knowledge base 31–2; an ecological China, ancient 111–12, 119
approach to study 130–2; and Chwe, M.S. 165
narrative skills 128; and posttraumatic Clark, Alan: Being There 188, 191
stress disorder 11–18; role of self- Clark, Andy 192–96
identity in construction of 11–18; and Clark, D.M. 13
self-memory system (SMS) 12–13, Clark, H.H. 29
15; use of bodily resources 144–8 Clark, S.E. 45
cognitive dissonance 88
Bakhtin, M.M. 82 Cognitive Interview (CI) 56–7
Barber, S.J. 26, 28 Cole, M. 69–71, 190
Barney, J. 155–57 collective intentionality 157–8, 160–2,
Bartlett, Frederic 1, 2, 11, 23, 69, 71, 164–8, 169, 175, 213; and cultural
74, 87, 211, 212 ‘common ground’ 165; and generic
Basque conflict (2006) study 4, 70, group norms 166–7; and group
74–81; conflict resolution 77, 78, identity 165; and social norms 166
79–80, 1 collective memory 93, 94, 102, 108,
Beals, D.E. 82 113–4
Belgium 27–8 Collins, B.E. 167
Berntsen, D. 12–14, 95, 117, 196 Collins, J.S. 195
Bibok, M.B. 191 Coman, A. 19, 26, 28
Billig, M. 72–3 combat veterans: and PTSD 16
body posture: and autobiographical context: cultural dimensions of social
remembering 132, 148 210–12
218 Index
context reinstatement: and eyewitness 44–5; memory accuracy 44–6; and
identification 56–7 rehearsal 52–4, 59–60; and social
context-free memory 210, 215 sharing 54–5; and stress arousal 47–8;
control systems 168, 171–5 system variables 44; vividness-accuracy
conventionalization 165–6 relationship 45; and weapon focus
Conway, M.A. 6, 11–5, 31–2, 33, 127 effect 48
cross-cultural psychology 71
Cuc, A. 23–6, 29 Feierstein, Daniel 96
cultural ‘common ground’ 165–6 Felin, T. 155–7, 174
cultural psychology 69; central premises figurations 91–2, 95
of 70–2 Finkenauer, C. 38, 42, 46–9, 51, 57,
culture/cultural dimensions 103–4, 58–9
210–12, 213; and cross-cultural Fivush, R. 89, 128, 187, 198
psychology 71; definition 103; flashbulb memory (FBM) 37–60; and
mnemonic practices 211–12; and emotional-integrative model 46–7,
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) 59; and event memory 41, 49–50, 49,
18; and schemata 211; and shared 55–8; event under scope of 41; and
beliefs 103–4, 211; of social context eyewitness identification 37, 45–6,
210–12; and social interactions 213 58–60, 216; and memory accuracy
cumulative heroisation 88 41–2, 58–9; and rehearsal 50–2, 59
Cutshall, J.L. 37, 46, 54 Foa, E.B. 13
forgetting 96 see also retrieval-induced
Davies, Graham 209, 210 forgetting
developmental psychology: and frames 91–2, 94, 162
scaffolding 189–91 Frege, G. 210
divine plan 110, 118 Fukuyama, Francis 115
dual representation theory 13
Gellner, E. 72
Ebbinghaus, H. 71 gender: and induced forgetting and
ecological psychology 170 in-group membership 26
Ehlers, A. 11, 13, 16 general event knowledge structures
elaboration: cultural politics of 197–9 31–2
embodied cognition: and generic group norms 166–7
autobiographical memory 127–9 genocides 96
emotional-integrative model 46–54 Georgi, Viola 88
emotional processing theory 13 gesticulation/gestures 128–9, 135–6,
encoding 2, 13, 23 139–42, 145–8, 214
Engel, Susan: Context Is Everything 1 Gilbert, M. 162–3
episodic memory 14–5, 31–2, 127 goal-states 158
Esposito, Elena 96 Gray, J. 70
Esser, Hartmut 95 ‘great men theory’ 110–11
ETA 74–5, 77, 78, 79–81, 211 Greenfield, Patricia 188
event memory 47; and context memory group identity 165
60; and flashbulb memory 41, 49–50,
49, 55–8; and rehearsal 49–52, 57–8 habitus 91–2, 95
eye-gaze direction: and autobiographical Halbwachs, Maurice 72, 87, 96
remembering 132, 136, 141, 142, Harré, R. 73
143, 144, 147, 148 Heinlein, Michael 93–4
eyewitness identification 37–60, 43–6; hermeneutic dialogue analysis 88
confidence-accuracy relation 45; and heteroglossia 82
context reinstatement 57; emotional Hirst, W. 3, 5, 11, 26, 29, 130, 210
context of 47–9; estimator variables history: as a cycle of suffering belief
44; and flashbulb memory 37, 45–6, 111; as the rise and fall of civilizations
58–60, 216; indicia of reliability 111–12
Index 219
Hofstede, G. 103, 105, 107, 111–2, language 71, 169–71, 214; double-
116, 118 dialogicality of 171; and scaffolding
Holocaust 87, 88, 89, 96, 107, 115–6 188, 190, 214
Horry, R. 45 learning, organizational see
HSE (high self-efficacy) 17 organizational learning
Human Development Index (HDI) 105 Leippe, M.R. 43, 45, 48
Hutchins, Edwin: Cognition in the Wild Leonhard, Nina 87
190–1 life scripts 89, 95
Hutchins, E. 155, 157, 169, 171, 175 lifetime periods 12, 31
lifetime schemas 12
Iggers, G.G. 108, 110, 112, 113, 115, linear progressive narratives 112–3
116 Liu, J.H. 102, 105, 113, 115
imagined community 72 Lüdtke, Alf 92
in-group membership: and retrieval- Luminet, O. 37, 41–2, 46–7, 51–2,
induced forgetting/silence 26–8, 29, 55–6
49; and trustworthiness 28–9
in-group/out-group psychology 165 McGrath, J.E. 171
individual intentionality: and scaffolded McNally, R.J. 11, 14–5
joint action model 158–9 Maglio, P. 168, 174
individualism 195–7 Marsh, E.J. 45, 54
individualism-collectivism 105 masculinity 103–5, 109, 112, 115
induced forgetting see retrieval-induced Mather, M. 26, 28
forgetting (RIF) medicalization of memory 93
indulgence versus restraint 103–4 Meissner, C.A. 45
Inglehart, R. 104, 107–8, 110, 112–6, member-tool-task networks 171–2
118 Memon, A. 56–7
intentionality: collective 164–8, 169, memory accuracy 17, 40–2, 44, 46, 49,
175, 213; from individual to joint 51–3, 58–9
159–60; joint 160–4, 168, 169, 174–5 Memory in Context, Context in Memory
internalization 195–7 (Davies and Thomson) 209, 210
Item Context Ensemble (ICE) theory 57 memory distortion: rehearsal as source
of 53
Joas, Hans 92, 95 memory studies 86, 90, 97
Jobson, I. 18 mental death 16
joint action, scaffolded see scaffolded mental models 95
joint action mentality 95
joint action plans 162–3 micro-foundations approach:
joint attention 163–4 organizational learning 155–6,
joint collaborative activity 160–2 173–4
joint goal 161–3, 213 mnemonic practices 211–12
joint intentionality 159–64, 168, 169, mnemonic silence see silence, mnemonic
174–5 Moller, Sabine 88, 90
joint recollection 213–14
narrative skills: and autobiographical
Kendon, A. 128–9 memory 128
King, B.G. 167 national identity 72
Kirsh, D. 168 National Socialism: and
Knoblich, G. 160–1, 170 Tradierungsforschung 87–90
Kohlstruck, Michael 88 nationalist conflicts: Basque Country see
Köhnken, G. 57 Basque Country conflict; identity and
Koppel, J. 26, 28, 51 positioning in remembering 72–3
Kpelle 211 Needham, J. 111–2
Kroneberg, Clemens 92, 95 Nelson, Katherine 128, 156, 172, 174,
Kvavilashvili, L. 42, 51 187, 190, 198
220 Index
Niedenthal, P.M. 191 flashbulb memory 50–2, 59; role
9/11 (2001) 41, 51 of in the emotional-integrative
normative self-monitoring 166 model 49–51; as source of memory
distortion 53–4; type of event 51–2;
objectification 72 type of 52
Oevermann, Ulrich 88 remembering: autobiographical
Olick, Jeffrey 94, 108 see autobiographical memory/
Operation Enduring Freedom/ remembering; and Basque Country
Operation Iraq Freedom study: and conflict (2006) 74–82; and contexts
PTSD 14 69; cultural psychology of 69–83; and
organizational action: and scaffolded sign mediation 69–70
joint action 171–5 remembrances 31, 86, 87, 92, 96, 128
organizational learning 154–7, 175, retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) 4,
212; brownfield 173; greenfield 173; 24–33; and autobiographical memory
micro-foundations approach 155–7; knowledge base 31–2; and in-group
scaffolded joint action as a micro- membership 26–8, 29; and individual
foundation for 173–4 differences 31; and selective silence
Ouchi, W.G. 168, 171–2 24–6, 29; and social group differences
OverGeneral Memory (OGM) 14 30–1; socially shared (SS-RIF) 25–6,
29; and trustworthiness 28–9, 30;
parental scaffolding: and children’s within-individual (WI-RIF) 25; and
memory 198 working self 32–3
Pea, Roy 188, 195–7 Riggs, D.S. 13
Peter, N. 89 Robinaugh, D.J. 14
Popular Party 75–6, 78, 79–80, 81 romantic violence-based narratives 113
positioning: and Basque Country Rostow: The Stages of Economic Growth
conflict 76–81; and nationalist 115
conflicts 72–4; theory of 73–4 Rothbaum, B.O. 13
post-event information 53, 59 Rubin, D.C. 12–14, 42, 95, 127
post-materialism 103–4, 107–8, 110,
115 scaffold/scaffolding 214, 215; and
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) affective domains 192; of aging and
11–18, 215; and autobiographical cognition 191–2; characteristics
memory 11–18; concepts of the of 188; children’s memory and
self 13; and culture 18; and mental parental 187, 190, 193, 197–9; and
death 16; and OverGeneral Memory cognitive domains 192; cultural and
(OGM) 14–15; and self-appraisals developmental psychology 189–91,
16, 18; and self-defining memories 195; cultural politics of elaboration
15; and self-efficacy 16–17, 18; self- 197–9; deficit model of 196; domains
memory system in 12–13, 15; and and dimensions 191–5; fading
Threat to the Conceptual Self model and dismantling of 195–6, 197;
18; and trauma centrality 13–14 internalization and individualism
power distance 103–5, 107–15 195–7; and language 188, 214; as
practice theory 94–5, 97 natural and passive 191; self- 193;
production systems 174 timescales 194; visual 192
prolepsis 74 scaffolded joint action 154, 157–72,
Protestant work ethic 113, 118 173, 213; collective intentionality
164–8, 169, 175; control systems
Read, J.D. 57 172, 174; from individual to joint
Reckwitz, Andreas 94 intentionality 159–60, 174–5;
rehearsal 49–55, 59–60; and event and individual intentionality
memory 49–52, 57–8; and eyewitness 158–9; joint intentionality 160–4,
identification 52–4, 59–60; and 168, 169, 174–5; and language
Index 221
170–1; member-tool-task networks sign mediation 69, 71, 81–2
171–2; as a micro-foundation for silence (mnemonic) 23–34, 215; and
organizational learning 173–4, 175; autobiographical memory knowledge
and organizational action 171, 172–3, base 31–2; and in-group membership
174, 175; sensemaking processes 172, 26–8, 49; and individual differences
174; socio-material ensembles 171–2, 31; induced forgetting and selective
174; technological and social 168–72 24–6, 29; and social group differences
Schank, R.C. 82 30–1; and trustworthiness 28–9, 30;
schema 69; lifetime 12, 31 and working self 31, 32–3
schemata 128, 211–12; narrative 128 Simon, Herbert 155–8
sedimented experiences 94, 96–7 Simons, R. 168, 171–2
self-appraisals: and Posttraumatic Stress situation models 95; higher order 170
Disorder (PTSD) 16, 18 Smith, A.M. 57
self-control: imposition of by culture social context 131–2, 209; cultural
103 dimensions of 103, 210–12;
self-defining memories: and Posttraumatic importance of 210; social interactions
Stress Disorder (PTSD) 15 as 213–14
self-efficacy: and PTSD 16–8 Social Darwinism 114
self-identity 215; role of in construction social interactions: as social context 24,
of autobiographical memory 11–2, 29, 213–14
16, 18 social norms 103, 163, 166
self-memory system (SMS) 31–3; in social representation theory 108
PTSD 12–3, 15 social scaffolds 168
self-monitoring: normative 166; social social sharing 53–5
164 socially shared retrieval-induced
self-scaffolding 193 forgetting (SS-RIF) 25–7, 29, 32
sensemaking processes 171–2, 174–5 socio-structural values: as antecedents of
shared beliefs (of history) 102–20; shared beliefs about world history 103
classification of historical beliefs 106; Spengler 106, 112
and culture 103–4, 211; dataset Steblay, N.K. 45, 48
105; and divine plan 110, 118; stress arousal: and eyewitness
existence of collective hegemonic identification 47–9
representation of history 117–18; and Sutherland, K.G. 15
‘great men theory’ 110–11; history
as a cycle of suffering 111; history team cognition 170
as the rise and fall of civilizations team mental models 170
111–12; linear progressive narratives technological scaffolds 168–9, 174, 194,
112–13; modern systems 112–15; 196
modernization contexts 118–19; old technology-oriented futuristic narratives
and pre-modern systems 110–12; 115–16
pessimistic/critical narratives 116; Thomson, Donald 209
post-modern systems 115–16; post- Threat to the Conceptual Self model 18
modernization contexts 119; and Tinti, C. 50–2, 56, 58, 60
progress 118–19; religiosity mixed Tomasello, M. 147, 157–167, 169,
with progress 118–19; romantic 174–5, 213
violence-based narratives 113–15; Tradierungsforschung 86–8, 90–1, 96, 212
socio-structural and cultural values traditional vs. secular-rational values
as antecedents of 103–4; study 103–5, 107–10, 118
analyses 107; study measures 105–6; transmission of narratives of the past see
technology-oriented futuristic Tradierungsforschung
narratives 115–16; validity of WHS trauma centrality: and PTSD 13–4, 18
dataset 108 trustworthiness 26: and in-group
shared intentionality hypothesis 157 membership 28; and silence 28–9, 30
222 Index
Vietnam veterans: and autobiographical Winter, S.G. 156–7, 172, 174
memory study 14–5 within-individual retrieval-induced
violence 77, 79, 96, 106, 110, 113–5, forgetting (WI-RIF) 25
117, 119–20; political 112 Wong, C.K. 57
Vygotsky, Lev 69, 71, 169, 189–90, Wood, D. 189, 191, 193
192–3, 195 working self 13, 15, 17 31–3; and
silence (mnemonic) 31, 32–3
wars/warfare 103, 114 World History Survey 105, 107, 110
weapon focus effect 48 World War II 87–8, 93, 107, 115–6;
WEIRD (Western, Educated, commemoration of 212
Industrialized, Rich and Democratic)
71, 198 Yuille, J.C. 37, 46, 54
Welzer, Harald 88–90, 94
Wertsch, J. 23, 69, 81–2, 128, 158, 169, Zapatero, José Luis Rodríguez 75–9, 81
189–90 zone of proximal development (ZPD)
Whetten, D.A. 155 190

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Contextualizing Human Memory

• the construction of self-identity in memory

Contextualizing Human Memory allows researchers to understand the variety of

Charles B. Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at John

Lucas M. Bietti is an Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation

Books in this series:

Perception Beyond Gestalt

Fine Art and Perceptual Neuroscience

Neuropsycholinguistic Perspectives on Language Cognition

Contextualizing Human Memory

Edited by Charles B. Stone

List of illustrations vii

1 An introduction to contextualizing human memory 1

2 Contextualizing traumatic memories: the role of

3 Contextualizing silence: a psychological approach to

4 Emotional context, rehearsal and memories: the mutual

5 Context in the cultural psychology of remembering:

7 Shared beliefs about world history and cultural context:

8 Contextualizing embodied remembering: autobiographical

9 Scaffolded joint action as a micro-foundation of

10 Scaffolding memory: themes, taxonomies, puzzles 187

11 The (social) context of memory 209

Nekane Basabe Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at the

Lucas M. Bietti is an Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation

Magdalena Bobowik is a Research Fellow in the Department of Social Psychology

Nicole Kouri is a Project Manager in the PTSD Research Program in the

James Hou-fu Liu is Professor of Psychology at Victoria University of Welling-

In developing a book examining the mnemonic influence of context, it is fair to

Contributions to this book

Continuing toward an interdisciplinary/contextualized model

we must also acknowledge that to be human is to be part of a biological

Cognitive and psychological

It is now well established that autobiographical memory is not a literal record of

Self-memory system in PTSD

Concepts of the self in PTSD

Overgeneralized autobiographical memory

Selective silence and induced forgetting

Social context: in-group membership matters

Social context: trustworthiness matters

Which memories are forgotten?

Social groups It is important to keep in mind that the mnemonic consequences of

Individual differences It might seem weird to be emphasizing ‘the individual’

Autobiographical memory knowledge base The autobiographical memory

In some circumstances, people remember the specifics of the context in which

Box 4.1 Marc’s FBM experience: the death of M. Jackson

Box 4.2 Denis’s crime eyewitness experience: the coffee

Two research fields

The role of the emotional context

Flashbulb memory: the emotional-integrative model

The emotional context of the crime eyewitness

The role of rehearsal

The role of rehearsal in the emotional-integrative model

The role of rehearsal in eyewitness identification

Rehearsal as source of memory distortion

Social sharing: influencing the memories of both

The relation between FBMs and event memory

From event memory to FBMs

Flashbulb memories entail a first-person perspective and involve qualia, and