ABSTRACT
Although there is considerable agreement about the importance of representation in human functioning, decades of psychological investigation and centuries of philosophical pondering indicate that there is little consensus regarding the nature and development of representation. To what do we refer when we speak of representation? How is representation constituted and how does representation develop? Different approaches in psychology frame the question of representation in terms of different aspects of human functioning (e.g., memory and retrieval, action, sociocultural processes, or the use of signs). In this chapter, we elaborate a dynamic skill approach to representation (Fischer 1980; Fischer & Granott, 1995; Fischer, Shaver & Carnochan, 1990) that proceeds from the assumption that a person cannot be broken into distinct components for memory, action, and sociocultural interaction. Instead, a person functions as a system in which all of these aspects work together. From this view, representation develops through the coordination of component actions within social and cultural contexts.
