Eval for reconstructive mem

• Bartlett's 'War of the Ghosts' study


  • Found that British participants changed their recall of the Indian story, using levelling (became shorter and more coherent), rationalisation (changed the order of effects), and assimilation (made story more representative of their culture)
  • Proved that schemas are used to fill in gaps in memory and can distort recall
• Schemas

  Mental constructs that are within the biological structure of our brain (nature), but the knowledge within each person's schemas vary due to upbringing and schemas represent stereotypical beliefs (nurture)
• The theory of reconstructive memory is holistic as it accounts for the effects of both nurture and nature
• Bartlett's study is an unreliable source of evidence, reducing the validity of the theory of reconstructive memory
• Tulving's theory of long-term memory (LTM)

  LTM consists of two main aspects: episodic memory (personal memories) and semantic memory (facts)
• The theory of reconstructive memory is a simplistic view of memory and cannot fully explain LTM, which reduces the validity of the theory