Partindo do pressuposto de que memória e narrativa são elementos inseparáveis, pois para se contar uma história é preciso ter um conhecimento prévio, ou seja, a estrutura narrativa (script) armazenada na memória, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo principal verificar o papel da memória construtiva em histórias orais, produzidas por crianças, a partir da leitura sequencial de imagens. Para tanto, nos apoiamos em Flavell, Miller & Miller (1999), que compartilham com a visão de Piaget de que o armazenamento de informações é construção; e a recuperação delas é reconstrução, em que o sujeito deve fazer inferências a partir daquilo que está na superfície contextual, denominado, assim, esses dois processos de memória construtiva. Levando em conta que a leitura de imagens faz parte da decodificação e construção de significados de mundo, elegemos as cinco sequências de imagens, retiradas da história A pedra no caminho, extraída do livro Esconde-esconde (FURNARI, 1988). Participaram desse estudo, doze crianças brasileiras, de 5, 8 e 10 anos de idade, de ambos os sexos, de uma instituição particular de ensino. Nesta perspectiva, o método constituiu-se em apresentar para as crianças, num primeiro momento, uma imagem de cada vez, na tela do computador. Logo em seguida, foram expostas as sequências das cinco imagens no conjunto. Após a visualização das imagens, as mesmas foram retiradas e as crianças foram solicitadas a contar a história. Os dados foram gravados em câmera de vídeo digital, com gravador de áudio e transcritos com base nas Normas do Projeto NURC/USP, propostas por Preti e Urbano (1990). De acordo com a natureza dos dados coletados, direcionamos a atenção, também, à memória episódica (TULVING, 1972), responsável pelo armazenamento dos eventos, mas sem perder de vista a memória semântica, onde estão as informações do conhecimento de mundo do sujeito. Os resultados confirmam divergências significativas, nas produções narrativas das crianças, nas diferentes faixas etárias, quanto à utilização dos elementos linguísticos e discursivos. Neste aspecto, não observamos distinção relevante, nas produções de histórias entre meninos e meninas. Outro fator interessante, é que as crianças, independente da idade e do sexo, se posicionam diante dos fatos narrados, apresentando pontos de vistas, crenças e valores, mostrando, dessa maneira, a originalidade e a autoria em suas histórias. As conclusões, por sua vez, evidenciam que as narrativas construídas pelas crianças é uma atividade que abrange o uso de mecanismos de funcionamento da memória de curto prazo, onde estão presentes as informações recentes (as imagens, antes visualizadas) e da memória de longo prazo (memória semântica e episódica). Todas estas informações, provenientes dos diferentes sistemas de memória, são recuperadas e reelaboradas, por meio do script, na memória construtiva infantil para o enredo acontecer. / Assuming that memory and narrative are inseparable elements, once that to tell a story is necessary to have a pre-knowledge - in other words, the narrative structure (script) kept in mind - the present research has as main goal to verify the role of the constructive memory in oral stories, produced by children, based on the reading of sequential images. Thus, we have the support of Flavell, Miller & Miller (1999), who share the same point of view of Piaget, that the storage of information is construction; and its recovery is reconstruction, in which the subject must make inferences from what is on the contextual surface, denominating, therefore, these two processes of constructive memory. Taking into account that the reading of images is part of decoding and construction of meanings of world, we chose the five sequences of images from the story A pedra no caminho, extracted from the book Esconde-esconde (FURNARI, 1998). Twelve Brazilian children aged 5, 8 and 10 years old, from both genders and from a private school, took part in this study. In this perspective, the method was formed to provide for children, at first, an image at a time, on the computer screen. Soon after, the sequence of the set of five images were shown. After the visualization of the images, the same ones were taken away and the children were asked to tell the story. Data were recorded on digital video camera with audio recorder and transcribed based on the standards of the NURC/USP Project, proposed by Preti e Urbano (1990). According to the nature of the collected data, we drew attention, also, to the episodic memory (TULVING, 1972), responsible for the storage of events, but not losing track of the semantic memory, where are the details of knowledge of the subject\'s world. The results confirm meaningful divergences in the childrens narrative productions in the different ages, regarding the usage of linguistic and discursive elements. In this aspect we didnt have noticed relevant distinction in the production of stories between boys and girls. Another interesting factor is that the children, regardless of age or gender, express themselves before the narrated facts, presenting their point of view, creeds and values, showing, in this way, the originality and the authorship of their stories. The conclusions show that the narratives constructed by the children is an activity that includes the use of the mechanisms of the short term memory, where are recent information (the images seen before), and of the long term memory (semantic and episodic memory). All this information, coming from different systems of memory, are recovered and rebuilt by the script, in the childs constructive memory, to finally the plot happen.

Partindo do pressuposto de que memória e narrativa são elementos inseparáveis, pois para se contar uma história é preciso ter um conhecimento prévio, ou seja, a estrutura narrativa (script) armazenada na memória, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo principal verificar o papel da memória construtiva em histórias orais, produzidas por crianças, a partir da leitura sequencial de imagens. Para tanto, nos apoiamos em Flavell, Miller & Miller (1999), que compartilham com a visão de Piaget de que o armazenamento de informações é construção; e a recuperação delas é reconstrução, em que o sujeito deve fazer inferências a partir daquilo que está na superfície contextual, denominado, assim, esses dois processos de memória construtiva. Levando em conta que a leitura de imagens faz parte da decodificação e construção de significados de mundo, elegemos as cinco sequências de imagens, retiradas da história A pedra no caminho, extraída do livro Esconde-esconde (FURNARI, 1988). Participaram desse estudo, doze crianças brasileiras, de 5, 8 e 10 anos de idade, de ambos os sexos, de uma instituição particular de ensino. Nesta perspectiva, o método constituiu-se em apresentar para as crianças, num primeiro momento, uma imagem de cada vez, na tela do computador. Logo em seguida, foram expostas as sequências das cinco imagens no conjunto. Após a visualização das imagens, as mesmas foram retiradas e as crianças foram solicitadas a contar a história. Os dados foram gravados em câmera de vídeo digital, com gravador de áudio e transcritos com base nas Normas do Projeto NURC/USP, propostas por Preti e Urbano (1990). De acordo com a natureza dos dados coletados, direcionamos a atenção, também, à memória episódica (TULVING, 1972), responsável pelo armazenamento dos eventos, mas sem perder de vista a memória semântica, onde estão as informações do conhecimento de mundo do sujeito. Os resultados confirmam divergências significativas, nas produções narrativas das crianças, nas diferentes faixas etárias, quanto à utilização dos elementos linguísticos e discursivos. Neste aspecto, não observamos distinção relevante, nas produções de histórias entre meninos e meninas. Outro fator interessante, é que as crianças, independente da idade e do sexo, se posicionam diante dos fatos narrados, apresentando pontos de vistas, crenças e valores, mostrando, dessa maneira, a originalidade e a autoria em suas histórias. As conclusões, por sua vez, evidenciam que as narrativas construídas pelas crianças é uma atividade que abrange o uso de mecanismos de funcionamento da memória de curto prazo, onde estão presentes as informações recentes (as imagens, antes visualizadas) e da memória de longo prazo (memória semântica e episódica). Todas estas informações, provenientes dos diferentes sistemas de memória, são recuperadas e reelaboradas, por meio do script, na memória construtiva infantil para o enredo acontecer. / Assuming that memory and narrative are inseparable elements, once that to tell a story is necessary to have a pre-knowledge - in other words, the narrative structure (script) kept in mind - the present research has as main goal to verify the role of the constructive memory in oral stories, produced by children, based on the reading of sequential images. Thus, we have the support of Flavell, Miller & Miller (1999), who share the same point of view of Piaget, that the storage of information is construction; and its recovery is reconstruction, in which the subject must make inferences from what is on the contextual surface, denominating, therefore, these two processes of constructive memory. Taking into account that the reading of images is part of decoding and construction of meanings of world, we chose the five sequences of images from the story A pedra no caminho, extracted from the book Esconde-esconde (FURNARI, 1998). Twelve Brazilian children aged 5, 8 and 10 years old, from both genders and from a private school, took part in this study. In this perspective, the method was formed to provide for children, at first, an image at a time, on the computer screen. Soon after, the sequence of the set of five images were shown. After the visualization of the images, the same ones were taken away and the children were asked to tell the story. Data were recorded on digital video camera with audio recorder and transcribed based on the standards of the NURC/USP Project, proposed by Preti e Urbano (1990). According to the nature of the collected data, we drew attention, also, to the episodic memory (TULVING, 1972), responsible for the storage of events, but not losing track of the semantic memory, where are the details of knowledge of the subject\'s world. The results confirm meaningful divergences in the childrens narrative productions in the different ages, regarding the usage of linguistic and discursive elements. In this aspect we didnt have noticed relevant distinction in the production of stories between boys and girls. Another interesting factor is that the children, regardless of age or gender, express themselves before the narrated facts, presenting their point of view, creeds and values, showing, in this way, the originality and the authorship of their stories. The conclusions show that the narratives constructed by the children is an activity that includes the use of the mechanisms of the short term memory, where are recent information (the images seen before), and of the long term memory (semantic and episodic memory). All this information, coming from different systems of memory, are recovered and rebuilt by the script, in the childs constructive memory, to finally the plot happen.

Master of Philosophy (Architecture) / Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover, use, and take advantage of contextual information, such as the location, tasks and preferences of the user, in order to adapt their behaviour in response to changing operating environments and user requirements. A problem that arises is the inability to respond to contextual information that cannot be classified into any known context. Many context-aware applications require all discovered contextual information to exactly match a type of context, otherwise the application will not react responsively. The ability to learn and recall contexts based on the contextual information discovered has not been very well addressed by previous context-aware applications and research. The aim of this thesis is to develop a component middleware technology for mobile computing devices for the discovery and capture of contextual information, using the situated reasoning concept of constructive memory. The research contribution of this thesis lies in developing a modified architecture for context-aware systems, using a constructive memory model as a way to learn and recall contexts from previous experiences and application interactions. Using a constructive memory model, previous experiences can be induced to construct potential contexts, given a small amount of learning and interaction. The learning process is able to map the many variations of contextual information currently discovered by the user with a predicted type of context based on what the application has stored and seen previously. It only requires a small amount of contextual information to predict a context, something common context-aware systems lack, as they require all information before a type of context is assigned. Additionally, some mechanism to reason about the contextual information being discovered from past application interactions will be beneficial to induce contexts for future experiences.

Master of Philosophy (Architecture) / Context-aware computing is a mobile computing paradigm in which applications can discover, use, and take advantage of contextual information, such as the location, tasks and preferences of the user, in order to adapt their behaviour in response to changing operating environments and user requirements. A problem that arises is the inability to respond to contextual information that cannot be classified into any known context. Many context-aware applications require all discovered contextual information to exactly match a type of context, otherwise the application will not react responsively. The ability to learn and recall contexts based on the contextual information discovered has not been very well addressed by previous context-aware applications and research. The aim of this thesis is to develop a component middleware technology for mobile computing devices for the discovery and capture of contextual information, using the situated reasoning concept of constructive memory. The research contribution of this thesis lies in developing a modified architecture for context-aware systems, using a constructive memory model as a way to learn and recall contexts from previous experiences and application interactions. Using a constructive memory model, previous experiences can be induced to construct potential contexts, given a small amount of learning and interaction. The learning process is able to map the many variations of contextual information currently discovered by the user with a predicted type of context based on what the application has stored and seen previously. It only requires a small amount of contextual information to predict a context, something common context-aware systems lack, as they require all information before a type of context is assigned. Additionally, some mechanism to reason about the contextual information being discovered from past application interactions will be beneficial to induce contexts for future experiences.