ABSTRACT
By the 1930s, these and parallel philosophical in¯uences began to ®nd expression in psychology, inspiring a focus on the ways in which people actively construct experience, rather than simply ``register'' environmental stimuli in a tabula rasa fashion. Among the psychologists to take this avowedly ``constructivist'' turn were the Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, who traced the qualitative transformations through which children schematized the physical and social world, and the British experimental psychologist, Fredric Bartlett, who demonstrated that memories did not simply entail recalling stored events, but instead were constructed in light of present motives through the guidance of mental schemas. Both in¯uences continue to be felt in contemporary research on autobiographical memory, which examines the construction and periodic consolidation of a shifting sense of identity throughout adult life (Fireman, McVay, & Flanagan, 2003; Neisser & Fivush, 1994).
