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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > Memory
Memory has never been closer to us, yet never more difficult to
understand. In the more than thirty specially commissioned essays
that make up this book, leading scholars survey the histories, the
theories, and the faultlines that compose the field of memory
research. The volume reconstructs the work of the great
philosophical and literary figures of the last two centuries who
recast the concept of memory and brought it into the forefront of
the modernist and postmodernist imagination-among them, Bergson,
Halbwachs, Freud, Proust, Benjamin, Adorno, Derrida, and Deleuze.
Drawing on recent advances in the sciences and in the humanities,
the contributors address the question of how memory works,
highlighting transactions between the interiority of subjective
memory and the larger fields of public or collective memory. The
public, political life of memory is an increasingly urgent issue in
the societies we now inhabit, while the category of memory itself
seems to become ever more capacious. Asking how we might think
about the politics of memory, the closing chapters explore a number
of defining instances in which the troubled phenomenon of memory
has entered and reshaped our very conception of what makes and
drives the domain of politics. These include issues of slavery, the
Soviet experience, the Holocaust, feminism and recovered memory,
and memory in post-apartheid South Africa.
With the goal of alleviating the paucity of knowledge about
advanced dementia, and helping to improve the care and services
that are increasingly needed for the growing numbers of people
living with dementia-type diseases, this book provides
evidence-based measurement scales for use by researchers and care
providers who are seeking to improve our understanding of the final
stages of this disease. Now collected in a single place are the
best available research tools for use with this unique population,
accompanied by knowledgeable reviews by the book's internationally
recognized authors and by the original journal articles that
explain each scale s development and validity. All scales presented
in this unique resource have been proven effective in eliciting
meaningful data from study subjects, patients, and long-term care
residents whose communication difficulties reduce their ability to
self-report or respond in traditionally measured ways. These
customized scales are useful for assessing the following domains in
late-stage or end-of-life dementia care: Dementia severity,
Satisfaction with care, Symptom management, Comfort during dying,
Quality of life, Activity involvement, Discomfort, Pain, Quality of
visits, Agitation, Rejection of care
"Memory" is perhaps the most extraordinary phenomenon in the
natural world. Every person's brain holds millions of bits of
information in long-term storage. This vast memory store includes
our extensive vocabulary and knowledge of language; the tremendous
and unique variety of facts we've amassed; all the skills we've
learned, from walking and talking to musical and athletic
performance; many of the emotions we feel; and the continuous
sensations, feelings, and understandings of the world we term
consciousness. Without memory there can be no mind as we understand
it.
Focusing on cutting-edge research in behavioral science and
neuroscience, Memory is a primer of our current scientific
understanding of the mechanics of memory and learning. Over the
past two decades, memory research has accelerated and we have seen
an explosion of new knowledge about the brain. For example, there
now exists a wide-ranging and successful applied science devoted
exclusively to the study of memory that has yielded better
procedures for eliciting valid recollections in legal settings and
improved the diagnosis and treatment of memory disorders.
Everyone fascinated by the scope and power of the human brain
will find this book unforgettable.
What does memory mean for learning in an age of smartphones and
search engines?Human minds are made of memories, and today those
memories have competition. Biological memory capacities are being
supplanted, or at least supplemented, by digital ones, as we rely
on recording-phone cameras, digital video, speech-to-text-to
capture information we'll need in the future and then rely on those
stored recordings to know what happened in the past. Search engines
have taken over not only traditional reference materials but also
the knowledge base that used to be encoded in our own brains.
Google remembers, so we don't have to. And when we don't have to,
we no longer can. Or can we? Remembering and Forgetting in the Age
of Technology offers concise, nontechnical explanations of major
principles of memory and attention-concepts that all teachers
should know and that can inform how technology is used in their
classes. Teachers will come away with a new appreciation of the
importance of memory for learning, useful ideas for handling and
discussing technology with their students, and an understanding of
how memory is changing in our technology-saturated world.
What does it signify when a Shakespearean character forgets
something or when Hamlet determines to 'wipe away all trivial fond
records'? How might forgetting be an act to be performed, or be
linked to forgiveness, such as when in The Winter's Tale Cleomenes
encourages Leontes to 'forget your evil. / With them, forgive
yourself'? And what do we as readers and audiences forget of
Shakespeare's works and of the performances we watch? This is the
first book devoted to a broad consideration of how Shakespeare
explores the concept of forgetting and how forgetting functions in
performance. A wide-ranging study of how Shakespeare dramatizes
forgetting, it offers close readings of Shakespeare's plays,
considering what Shakespeare forgot and what we forget about
Shakespeare. The book touches on an equally broad range of
forgetting theory from antiquity through to the present day, of
forgetting in recent novels and films, and of creative ways of
making sense of how our world constructs the cultural meaning of
and anxiety about forgetting. Drawing on dozens of productions
across the history of Shakespeare on stage and film, the book
explores Shakespeare's dramaturgy, from characters who forget what
they were about to say, to characters who leave the stage never to
return, from real forgetting to performed forgetting, from the mad
to the powerful, from playgoers to Shakespeare himself.
How Nations Remember draws on multiple disciplines in the
humanities and social sciences to examine how a nation's account of
the past shapes its actions in the present. National memory can
underwrite noble aspirations, but the volume focuses largely on how
it contributes to the negative tendencies of nationalism that give
rise to confrontation. Narratives are taken as units of analysis
for examining the psychological and cultural dimensions of
remembering particular events and also for understanding the
schematic codes and mental habits that underlie national memory
more generally. In this account, narratives are approached as tools
that shape the views of members of national communities to such an
extent that they serve as co-authors of what people say and think.
Drawing on illustrations from Russia, China, Georgia, the United
States, and elsewhere, the book examines how "narrative templates,"
"narrative dialogism," and "privileged event narratives" shape
nations' views of themselves and their relations with others. The
volume concludes with a list of ways to manage the disputes that
pit one national community against another.
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