Memory and Temporal Perspective: The Role of Temporal Frameworks in Memory Development

Abstract

An account of the development of temporal understanding is proposed which links such understanding with the development of episodic memory. We distinguish between different ways of representing time in terms of the kinds of temporal frameworks they involve. Distinctions are made between frameworks that are perspectival or nonperspectival and those that represent recurrent sequences or particular times. Even primitive temporal understanding integrates both perspectival and nonperspectival components. However, since early frameworks are event-based and localized, they are not yet sufficient for episodic memory in that they do not enable the child to think of events as having occurred at particular points in time. We describe the emergence of new kinds of frameworks in terms of the development of temporal decentering. Two levels of temporal decentering are distinguished, with the higher level involving an appreciation of how event representations depend on one's temporal perspective.

The Development of Temporal Concepts: Learning to Locate Events in Time

“…However, events do not just have specific durations, they also have temporal locations, just as objects do not only have spatial extent, they also have spatial locations. Thus, we can talk about temporal frameworkssystems for representing temporal locations -in the same way as we can talk about spatial frameworks (McCormack & Hoerl, 1999). The most familiar temporal framework that we operate with is the conventional clock and calendar system.…”

Understanding the "lived Experience" of Sport Event Volunteers: Using the Hermeneutic Circle as a Guiding Conceptual Framework

“…In order for a thought to be a memory rather than an imagination in one's mind, it must be regarded as something that has previously occurred in one's life course and of which one has been aware of in order for it to be recalled at a later point (Howe & Courage, 1997;McCormack & Hoerl, 1999;Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997) or as Klein (2001) termed it: "memory requires more than mere dating a fact in the past. It must be dated in my past" (p. 26).…”

“…In addition, in order to establish what it was like to have been a sport event volunteer at a particular event and to provide the researcher with a personal narrative, the individual person has to have the ability to selfreflect and to be conscious of the past. This refers to the capacity to know about one's mental state that he or she has experienced at a specific moment in the past (Wheeler et al, 1997;McCormack & Hoerl, 1999). These issues relate to the aspect of distortion of memories (and meaning) over time that according to Schacter (1997) is inevitable as memory by nature is "invariably and inevitably selective" (p. 348) due to the influence of social and psychological factors on information collection, storage, and retrieval processes.…”

On being stuck in time

“…11 A similar thought is fleshed out further in McCormack & Hoerl (1999), who relate research on children's acquisition of scripts to a view in linguistics according to which aspectual notions (e.g., completed, ongoing…) are grasped before tensed ones (e.g., past, present…) (see Wagner, 2001, for a recent discussion). McCormack & Hoerl (1999) suggest that children's recounting or re-enacting scripts might indicate an ability to mark events successively as, e.g., ongoing vs. completed, as they go through the script.…”

“…McCormack & Hoerl (1999) suggest that children's recounting or re-enacting scripts might indicate an ability to mark events successively as, e.g., ongoing vs. completed, as they go through the script. This ability appears to be more primitive than a grasp of tenses, though, in that it need not involve use of the notion of the time at which an event happens.…”