ABSTRACT
In retrieving a memory such as this, it is unlikely that we simply dip into the equivalent of some “mental ling cabinet” to emerge victorious with a pristine memorial record of Redgrave’s historic race. Rather, what we experience as memory is actually the product of the emergent properties of a mental representation for some previously experienced event combined with our attempts to recover it. As Lashley (1950) concluded, there is no single representation, or engram, for an event tucked away in memory waiting to be accessed. Memory retrieval is, in fact, a staggeringly complex phenomenon-one that involves tapping into dynamic representations jointly shaped by the original experience, the
history of encountering and retrieving that information during the interim, and the relationship of these representations to other memories (Moscovitch, 2007; Nadel & Moscovitch, 1997; Nadel, Samsonovich, Ryan, & Moscovitch, 2000; Tulving, 1983). Accordingly, memory retrieval is more akin to the assembly of an edited volume (much like this one) in which individual chapters and sections are sourced, fused together, and edited in line with a set of working goals.
