This chapter is grounded on three hypotheses: 1) that intentional factors in historical narratives, such as expressions about people’s desires and beliefs, influence the comprehension and recalling of historical discourse; 2) that personal factors, such as explanations for particular human actions, also have the same effect; and 3) that learning history implies acquiring the ability to establish links between intentional and non-intentional factors and personal and suprapersonal processes.

The authors draw from their study in which they examined the weight of intentional factors on the history learning of 144 elementary and high school students. Students were first given a text about the Nazi Party’s rise to power in Germany and then asked a series of questions to test their recall ability. Generally, the authors found that good recall of non-personal and non-intentional factors was due to students’ ability to apply present schemata to past events.