Complete the practice.
Memory is ______ rather than retrieval: each recall rebuilds and re-stores. So never use testimony alone for verifiable facts like dates, cross-check those against documents. Do use it for ______: experience, motivation, and what people believed they were doing. And treat a factual error as a ______ about how a community made sense of its past.
Word bank: reconstructive · meaning · datum · archival · transcript
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- Memory is reconstructive rather than a recording.
- Its distortion becomes a datum about meaning.
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Memory is reconstructive rather than retrieval: each recall rebuilds and re-stores. So never use testimony alone for verifiable facts like dates, cross-check those against documents. Do use it for meaning: experience, motivation, and what people believed they were doing. And treat a factual error as a datum about how a community made sense of its past.
Reconstructive, meaning, datum. Documents are strong where testimony is weak and silent exactly where testimony speaks, which is why the two are partners rather than rivals.
Practise Oral History and Testimony
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
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