Reconstructive Memory

• Who made the reconstructive memory theory?

  Bartlett (1932)
• What is a schema?

  Knowledge packages or mental representation of information about a specific event or object. We use schemas to fill in the gaps during recall.
• Aim of Bartlett War of the Ghosts

  • Bartlett argued that memory is an active process rather than a passive tape recording of experience as Ebbinghaus suggested. 
  • Aimed to investigate how memory of a story appears  by previous knowledge. 

  Hypothesis

  • memory is reconstructive and that people store + retrieve information according to expectations formed by cultural schemes.
• Procedure of Bartlett War of the Ghosts

  -Used serial reproduction - Ppts hear a story or see a drawing + are told to reproduce it over a short time + then over a period of days, weeks, months or years.

  -Told story “The War of the Ghosts” 

  • Story was foreign + unknown to British people and therefore ideal to study
• Findings of Bartlett War of the Ghosts - Distortion


  Participants changed the story as they tried to remember it
• Findings of Bartlett War of the Ghosts - Assimilation


  The story became more consistent with the participants' own cultural expectations - these details were changed to fit the norms of British culture.
• Findings of Bartlett War of the Ghosts - Leveling


  The story became shorter with each retelling as the participants didn’t tell information which wasn’t important 
• Findings of Bartlett War of the Ghosts - Sharpening

  Participants also tended to change the order of the story in order to make sense of it using terms more familiar to the culture of the participants.
• Findings of Bartlett War of the Ghosts - Overall

  The participants overall remembered the main themes in the story but changed the unfamiliar elements to match their own cultural expectations.
• Conclusion of Bartlett War of the Ghosts

  Remembering is not passive but rather an active process where information is retrieved and changed to fit into existing schemas.

  This is done in order to create meaning in the incoming information. Bartlett realised that humans constantly search for meaning and therefore created the reconstructive memory theory. This means that memories are not copies of experiences but rather reconstructions and therefore are altered.
• Assimilation


  The process of incorporating new information, experiences, or ideas into your existing cognitive structure or belief system.
• Leveling

  Information becomes shorter as time goes along as small details are forgotten