The Nature of the Traces and the Dynamics of Memory

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to show that current single-system models, clearly located in a dynamic memory perspective and embodied, had brought answers to questions that appeared in the Atkinson and Shiffrin model, that has been the reference for multi-system memory models for 50 years: one concerning the question of recovery in memory and the other the nature of the traces in memory. Our focus will be to show that it is not possible to define storage and recovery processes without taking account of the contents of memory and the dynamics of the emergence of knowledge. Two models will be presented, both defending the idea that it is not possible to distinguish between process and content, as memory does not encode and retrieve contents but reusable processes. In other words, these models suggest that knowledge is in a state of constant reorganization due to a combination of the subject's activity and environmental constraints. That is to say that they consider memory as a dynamic system. Consequently, the traces cannot be dissociated from the mechanisms that gave them birth. It is certainly on this point that the most radical break between these models and anterior models of memory.