Memory as a Constructive Process; Report from the Project on Conditions of School Learning and Instructional Strategies. Theoretical Paper No. 48.

Evidence from studies of memory for meaningful materials such as sentences and prose passages is reviewed in this paper with emphasis on its implications for the nature of the memory representation. It is argued that models of memory which involve the retrieval of stored copies of originally presented material cannot account for two crucial phenomena: (1) the retention of meaning in spite of losses in memory for specific wording, and (2) the "recall" of information which could only have been obtained by inference. Views of memory which include varying degrees of constructive, interpretive, and reconstructive processes are considered as alternatives to the copy model. These alternatives include theories based on psycholinguistic constructs and visual imagery, as well as positions involving the abstraction and reconstruction of information by means of more general integrative representations. (Author)