Remembering

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Remembering

 

an element or an independent form of human activity in which particular aspects of an impending act of reproduction are formed. Together with retention and reproduction, remembering is one of the basic components of memory. The problem of remembering was first dealt with systematically by Plato. The first experimental study of remembering was undertaken by the German psychologist H. Ebbinghaus (1885) within the framework of the associationist school of psychology. The inadequacy of the concept of remembering as a mechanical imprinting and an associative linking of traces was, however, demonstrated by the German school of psychology of G. Muller (1850–1934). Remembering occurs in accordance with the meaningful organization of material and, as a rule, is involved in the solution of an actual problem (B. V. Zeigarnik, 1927). The works of the Soviet psychologists A. N. Leont’ev, P. I. Zinchenko, and A. A. Smirnov have shown that the development of specifically human social and historical forms of memory is associated with the transition from “direct” to indirect modes of remembering and with the perfection of the means of remembering and their interiorization, by virtue of which human memory acquires a voluntary and conscious character. The study of remembering has received clinical application in the diagnosis of localized brain damage and in psychiatry.

REFERENCES

Leont’ev, A. N. Razvitie pamiati. Moscow, 1931.
Blonskii, P. P. Pamiat’ imyshlenie. Moscow-Leningrad, 1935.
Smirnov, A. A. Problemy psikhologii pamiati. Moscow, 1966.
Zeigarnik, B. V. Vvedenie v patopsikhologiiu. Moscow, 1966.
Lurüa, A. R. Vysshie korkovye funktsii cheloveka i ikh narusheniia pri lokal’ nykh porazheniiakh mozga, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1969.

A. A. PUZYREI

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.