Cross-contextual Reminding
Roger C. Schank · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 1999
Remindings can occur both in context and across contexts. To understand learning, we must attempt to understand the nature of the structures in memory that contain the episodes of which we are reminded. Educators especially need to understand the nature of these structures because teaching means facilitating changes both in mental structures and in the organization of those structures. Change in memory depends upon reminding. We cannot alter a memory structure without somehow melding a current experience with a prior one. Reminding is also about prediction. When we find a structure in memory to help us process a new experience, that structure is, in essence, predicting that a new experience will turn out just like an old one. In a sense, too, learning is about predicting outcomes. When we enter a new situation, we are interested in how it will turn out. This can be just a passive wondering about how events will unfold, or it can be an active undertaking to make events play out in a certain way. When we learn, we are learning about which actions will cause which effects, and which events normally follow other events; we are also learning to distinguish between the long-term and shortterm effects of an action. Predictions come in a variety of forms and depend upon remindings that can occur across contexts. We see analogies. We make generalizations. We come to conclusions about how things will turn out.