Katherine Nelson's Autobiographical Memory

In their book, Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative self (2013), the editors, Robyn Fivush and Catherine A. Haden, focus the first part of the book toward The Development of Autobiographical Memory and Self Understanding. In that section, Narrative and Self, Myth and Memory, Katherine Nelson writes the first chapter on “the theory [of] current work on autobiography and the development of self understanding” (Nelson, 2013, 3). Specifically, she explores the emergence of the cultural self-understanding by categorizing the different stages of its emergence, and then, with that classification in mind, she examines different theories on childhood amnesia and Autobiographical Memory. First, Nelson classifies the different, yet, interdependent stages of a child’s development into the cultural self. For Nelson, these levels set the groundwork for the rest of the essay. With this leveling hierarchy in mind, Nelson then gives an
The simplicity of this theory is matched with its justification. This theory advocates there is a causal connection between narrative conversations about the past between a mother and child and the Child’s ability to remember. Unlike the Memory and Cognitive Self theory, the Social Interactions and Autobiographical Memory has an ample amount of evidence to support it (Engel, 1986; Miller et al, 1990; Nelson, 1989b, 1993a; Tessler & Nelson, 1994). With the levels of understanding in mind, Nelson evaluates a variety of theories about childhood amnesia and the origin of autobiographical memory. This work was rather successful in exploring a variety of views all while giving substantial critiques to them. Essays like this are exceedingly relevant in the ever-growing field of