Bartlett's reconstructive memory

• Aim-

  To investigate how memories are reconstructed when people are asked to recall a story
• Method-

  • 20 people from a University
  • Told them 'The war of the ghosts' story.
  • Asked them to recall it 15 minutes later to another participant.
  • Repeated like a game of Chinese whispers.
  • Participants asked to recall after few days, weeks, months, and years.
• Results-

  • Participants retold story with small changes based on their cultural expectations and social situations.
  • Students were found to altered the story to fit into their own cultures.
  • e.g, instead of canoes, students recalled transport as cars and weapons as guns instead of bows and arrows.
• Conclusion-

  People remember fragments of memories and reconstruct the memory based on what they expect to happen
• Reconstructive memory

  We only store some parts of memories and fill in gaps with our expectations when it comes to recalling it so it makes sense to us.
• Evaluation point 1

  • Weakness- experiment took place in a lab setting
  • Students could feed nervous or under pressure
  • Could lead to inaccurate results.
  • Study lacks ecological validity, results could be inaccurate.
• Evaluation point 2

  • Weakness- other people might not have acted in the same way
  • Bartlett used students
  • Not generalisable to the rest of the population