Breaking from the Past: Bartlett's Role in Rethinking Memory: Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Frederic Bartlett

Abstract:Frederick Bartlett's Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology offered a radical alternative to the century-old notion that memory was like a storehouse. Bartlett insisted that memories were not stored away, but were reconstructed on the run, with new rendering emerging with each act of reconstruction. As a result, psychologists should study not memory, but remembering, and focus on the social contexts in which remembering takes place. Recent work on deep learning and reconsolidation has provided substantial support for Bartlett's approach.