In the context of an Emory Symposium on Cognition honoring the enormous contributions to cognitive psychology of Ulric Neisser, this book brings together ecological approaches to various aspects of cognition and its development. Well-known former students and colleagues of Neisser articulate their views on perception, memory, and culture. There is a strong developmental component, with chapters on infant perception, infant problem solving, and the cognitive profile of Williams Syndrome, as well as two chapters that consider philosophical issues related to cognitive psychology.

In the context of an Emory Symposium on Cognition honoring the enormous contributions to cognitive psychology of Ulric Neisser, this book brings together ecological approaches to various aspects of cognition and its development. Well-known former students and colleagues of Neisser articulate their views on perception, memory, and culture. There is a strong developmental component, with chapters on infant perception, infant problem solving, and the cognitive profile of Williams Syndrome, as well as two chapters that consider philosophical issues related to cognitive psychology.

Recollections of unexpected and emotional events (called 'flashbulb' memories) have long been the subject of theoretical speculation. Previous meetings have brought together everyone who has done research on memories of the Challenger explosion, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of flashbulb memories. How do flashbulb memories compare with other kinds of recollections? Are they unusually accurate, or especially long-lived? Do they reflect the activity of a special mechanism, as has been suggested? Although Affect and Accuracy in Recall focuses on flashbulb memories, it addresses more general issues of affect and accuracy. Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory? If so, under what conditions? By what physiological mechanisms? This 1993 volume is evidence of progress made in memory research since Brown and Kulick's 1977 paper.

In Remembering Reconsidered the new ecologically-oriented study of memory makes contact with more traditional approaches. The problems considered by the authors include memory for randomly selected daily events, for folk ballads, for early childhood experiences, for thoughts, for events known secondhand, for knowledge acquired years before and subjected to "reminding" in the laboratory, and for a variety of stimuli presented with theoretical questions in mind. The theme unifying the contributions, which is developed by the editors in their separate introductory chapters, is concerned with the adaptive significance of memory in daily life together with careful analysis of the variables on which it depends.

Recollections of unexpected and emotional events (called "flashbulb" memories) have long been the subject of theoretical speculation. The fourth Emory Symposium on Cognition brought together everyone who has done research on memories of the Challenger explosion, in order to gain better understanding of the phenomenon of flashbulb memories: How do flashbulb memories compare with other kinds of recollections? Are they unusually accurate, or especially long-lived? Do they reflect the activity of a special mechanism, as has been suggested? The book also addresses more general issues of affect and accuracy: Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory? If so, under what conditions? By what physiological mechanisms?

In Remembering Reconsidered, the new ecologically oriented study of memory makes contact with more traditional approaches. The emerging result may be what several of the authors have begun to call 'functionalism': a concern with the adaptive significance of memory in ordinary life coupled with a careful analysis of the variables on which it depends. In different ways, the chapters reflect this concern. The editors bring together a diverse collection of studies on remembering, using subjects ranging from folk songs to 'crib talk'. Introductory chapters weave these themes together, developing an underlying sense of the project of the volume as a whole. This is the second volume in the Emory Symposia on Cognition. The Emory Cognition Project, directed by Ulric Neisser, emphasizes an ecological approach to problems in theoretical, experimental, and applied cognitive psychology.