The Role of Narrative in Recollection: A View from Cognitive Psychology and Neuropsychology

Abstract

© Oxford University Press, 2013. Narratives play no small part when people attempt to recollect certain events, experiences, and memories regarding their past, since such would enable them to give their own accounts regarding any aspect or point of time in their life, be it a specific event or their entire life story. This chapter attempts to look into how narratives are able to facilitate such recollections, through providing an outline of the processes involved in recollection and by looking into how these cognitive processes undergo certain disturbances that are brought about by neural damage and its effects. To further understand the mechanisms that underlie such processes, this chapter explores certain essential behavioral data such as explicit memory, imagery, language, narrative reasoning, and neuropsychological data such as the various losses encountered in explicitmemory and in other systems.