Temporal reference systems and autobiographical memory

Abstract

Introduction and theoretical orientation Everyday life is dominated by routines. The flow of action is structured by the recurrent requirements of our society. We work, play, and worship according to timetables that have evolved over centuries and that provide a shared temporal framework for our individual histories. The way we understand time is derived from the social and institutional regulation of action. Although we use clocks and calendars to mark time, we do not experience time as the succession of uniform units of duration. Rather, we experience time as action, and succession as either the repetition of an action or a change from one activity to another. When we have no prescribed activity to perform, as during vacations or in retirement, we may lose track of time or experience a sense of timelessness. Time and action codefine each other, and both are organized through the institutions of society. Each person engages in a variety of socially regulated activities (e.g., work, schooling, recreation, worship). For convenience I will refer to these various activities as domains of action. I think it is self-evident that participation in a domain of action engenders an appropriate cognitive representation of the temporal pattern associated with it. Viewed as socially prescribed routines, these patterns function as timetables (or schedules or calendars). I shall refer to the cognitive representations of such timetables as temporal reference systems . These representations are schemata that codify when and in what order activities occur for a given domain of action.

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