Summary notes including a description of schemas, the procedure and results of the War of Ghosts and an evaluation of the Reconstructive Memory Theory.
BARTLETT (1932)
RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY & SCHEMAS
Bartlett’s central insight was that memory is not like a tape recorder: it doesn’t faithfully play back our experiences. In-
stead, it changes or “reconstructs” them imaginatively.
WHAT ARE SCHEMAS?
- the basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us to form a mental representation of the world
( “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions and abstract (i.e. theoreti-
cal) concepts.)
- Memory makes use of schemas to organise things. When we recall an event, our schemas tell us what is supposed to
happen. The schemas might fill in the gaps in our memory (confabulation) and even put pressure on our mind to re-
member things in a way that fits in with the schema, removing or changing details.
THE WAR OF THE GHOSTS
Procedure
- Bartlett showed 20 students a Native American ghost story (The War of the Ghosts) which had unusual features.
- He asked them to read it then recall it on several occasions after a few hours, days, weeks or even years – a technique
called serial reproduction (and a Repeated Measures design).
- Bartlett compared how the recalled versions of the story differed from the original.
Results
- Participants shortened the story when they reproduced it, from 330 words to 180 words, with the shortest reproduc-
tion happening after the longest gap (two years)
- Participants also confabulated (fill in the gaps in our memory) details, changing unfamiliar parts of the story to fa-
miliar ideas in line with their schemas: canoes and paddles became boats and oars, hunting seals became fishing.
- Participants rationalised the story, coming up with explanations for baffling parts of the story. For example, in later
reproductions, participants missed out the “ghosts” and just described a battle between Native American tribes.
- Bartlett didn’t use many experimental controls, asking participants to reproduce the story whenever was convenient.
He bumped into one student in the street two years later and asked her to reproduce The War of the Ghosts there and
then. The changes in the stories were also down to his own subjective opinion.
EVALUATING RECONSTRUCTIVE MEMORY (AO3) - CODA
C- Credibility
- The idea of schemas has been supported in a lot of studies since the 1930s.
- Loftus carried out a range of lab experiments into reconstructive memory, all of which had tight experimental
controls, standardised procedures and collected quantitative data, making them quite objective and reliable.
O - Objections
- The early study by Bartlett was not at all scientific. Bartlett did not follow standardised procedures, getting his stu-
dents to reproduce the story as-and-when. He had no scoring system for measuring changes in recall other than
counting the number of words. This makes his research conclusions subjective.
- Bartlett’s research was particularly unrealistic and lacks ecological validity
- Cambridge University students to recall Native American ghost stories. This strange task lacks ecological validity
- although Bartlett claimed the task had to be strange so as to prompt the participants to level and sharpen the de-
tails in their memories.
D - Differences
- Reconstructive Memory has links to Tulving’s theories about Semantic Memory.
- Tulving argues our memory has semantic stores where we keep our understanding of relationships and rules –
very similar to schemas. If Reconstructive Memory is true, this makes Tulving’s ideas more plausible. Moreover,
semantic memory might have much more influence over episodic memory than Tulving imagined, because
schemes dictate how we reconstruct our memories.
- it doesn’t explain how memory is reconstructed/lacks scientific evidence
- The other cognitive theories of memory describe the processes at work in rehearsing, retrieving and recalling.
These processes have been linked to specific parts of the brain thanks to brain scanning and research on patients
with lesions in specific parts of the brain. Reconstructive Memory is much more vague about how schemas work
and where they are located.
A - Application
- helps us understand some things about patients with memory loss like Clive Wearing or people in the early stages of
dementia.
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