ABSTRACT
There is robust empirical and theoretical support for thinking that autobiographical remembering depends upon the mastery of socio-cultural narrative practices and the exercise of narrative skills. In getting clear about why autobiographical memory and narrativity may be inescapably bound together, a preparatory comparison with more purely embodied forms of remembering proves instructive. Procedural memory is the most ubiquitous kind of remembering: it is in essence remembering how to do something. A crucial difference between these two types of memory is that the former does not involve representing any of particular past occurrences whereas explicit representation is a necessity for the latter. A well-established tradition in developmental psychology regards autobiographical memory as shot through with narrativity. A strong reading of SIT gains in credibility when considered against the backdrop of new, empirically motivated thinking about the function of autobiographical memory.
