English
Etymology
From etyl
la redintegratus, past participle of
redintegro
Noun
- Restoration to a
whole or sound state.
- chemistry obsolete
Restoration of a mixture
to its former nature and state.
- The reinstatement of a
memory upon the
presentation of a stimulus element that was a
part of the stimulus complex that had aroused the
event.
Redintegration refers to the restoration of the
whole of something from a part of it. In
cognitive
psychology the word is used in reference to phenomena in the
field of
memory. The
everyday phenomenon is that a small part of a memory can remind a
person of the entire memory. In contemporary memory research it is
defined as "the use of long-term knowledge to facilitate
recall."
Proust
The great literary example of redintegration is
Marcel
Proust's novel
Remembrance of Things Past. The
conceit is that the entire
seven-volume novel consists of the memories triggered by the taste
of a
madeleine soaked
in lime tea. "I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine
soaked in her concoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give
to me. Immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her
room was, rose up like the scenery of a theatre to attach itself to
the little pavilion, opening on to the garden, which had been built
out behind it for my parents", ... for seven volumes. (See
List
of longest novels.)
Associationists
Redintegration was one of the memory
phenomena that the
Associationist
school of philosophical psychologists sought to explain and
used as evidence supporting their their theories.
Contemporary Memory Research
In the study of word recall in
working
memory, multi-syllable words that may not be heard completely
can be recalled in their entirety. It is hypothesized that this is
accomplished by a redintegration process which allows the entire
word to be reconstructed by using the subject's knowledge of the
vocabulary of the language. The process seems to work because of
the
redundancy of
language. The mechanics of redintegration is still not understood
and is being actively researched.
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