Deciphering Memory: John Adams and the Authorship of the Declaration of Independence

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An American Journal Article Review: “Deciphering Memory: John Adams and the Authorship of the Declaration of Independence” The article began with John Adams, who was portrayed as a man of principle and integrity, recalling a particular event where he appointed Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence and the latter who seemingly denied the whole incident ever happened. The dominant purpose of this article seems to be to convince the readers that science, specifically cognitive psychology, can explain why both parties gave conflicting memories of the event. Robert E McGlone claims that there are new advancements in psychology that can be used to further explore the nature of a memory. To begin with, McGlone contested Dumas Malone’s 1948 writings, which implied that “if Adams’s recall of detail was suspect, his memory of essentials is correct”. He reasoned that “commonsense resolution of the matter alone cannot resolve the issue”. He started off by presenting the different kinds of memory and all its complexities, which are simplified by schemas (or schemata). Schemas, he said is “the most useful discovery of memory researchers”. He mentioned the specific schemas and went into exhaustive details to support his argument: scene schema, single event schema or scripts, story schema and central role schema. He also went on to classify three distinctive levels of structure in the formation of memory (lifetime periods, resulting periodization and sensory details). Alongside these, McGlone provided different instances of how John Adams’s memory has really evolved through time facilitated by these schemas. For example, with the scene schema, he mentioned an incident that took place in Paris in 1786. Jefferson wanted to commemorate the declaration and “sketched from memory a rough, somewhat inaccurate floor plan of the Assembly Room in Independence Hall”

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