ABSTRACT
Our overall goal in this chapter is to clarify the relevance of contextualism to theory and research on adult memory and metamemory. Nevertheless, we shall not attempt an exhaustive review of this metatheory, or the contextual perspective on theories of development (see, rather, Dixon, 1986; Lerner, Hultsch, & Dixon, 1983; Pepper, 1970; Rosnow & Georgoudi, 1986; Sarbin, 1977). Instead, we focus more attention on a related (if not derivative) approach to the study of psychological problems, viz., functionalism. It has long been clear that contextualism and functionalism are not identical (e.g., Angell, 1907), although their common philosophical roots—i.e., that they derive from similar “logical motivation” (Angell’s term)—and similar theoretical and methodological strengths and weaknesses are evident. In the first section of this chapter, we summarize the major features of the functionalism present in the early part of this century (of, e.g., Angell, Baldwin, Dewey, and James), thereby setting the stage for our discussion of its application to the study of memory phenomena.
