Remembering Life Experiences

Abstract

Abstract Two-thirds of a century have passed since Frederic Bartlett (1932) criticized standard research methods in memory as irrelevant to human life. “The psychologist, whether he uses experimental methods or not, is dealing, not simply with reactions, but with human beings. Consequently the experimenter must consider the everyday behavior of the ordinary individual, as well as render an account of the responses of his subjects within a laboratory” (p. 12). Despite Bartlett’s trenchant critique, it was not until the 1980s that the ecological study of memory-especially memory for life events-began to develop as a recognizable subdiscipline in its own right. The goal of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of that discipline’s achievements.