The dynamics of memory are broadly distributed across relationships, institutions, material affordances and, of course, discursive practices. The Chancellor's memory is an attempt to show how the subject matter parsed by cognitive psychology can be lifted wholesale into a discursive approach. Discursive Psychology has its roots in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, a discipline that was acutely aware of the vacuous nature of claims to systematicity, rigor, and most notoriously replication. Dave Middleton's early work shared a concern with the linguistic steering of children's activities, having been part of the group that refined the experimental demonstration of scaffolding in parent child interactions. These studies were critical to a move in developmental psychology of placing cognitive development in a sociocultural context. Edwards and Goodwin argue that lexical development in children is poorly grasped when it is treated in terms of gradual conceptual understanding, because this implies that thinking precedes doing
