Reconstructive Memory

• What is a Schema?

  ~A mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing
• Remembering: The War of Ghosts: What was it?

  War of Ghosts - Native American Folk Tale
• Remembering: Why did Bartlett choose it?

  • Culturally unfamiliar to participants - examine the transformation that the story may make when reconstructed by participants
  • Lacked rational order
  • Dramatic nature of story would encourage visual imagery
  • Conclusion was somewhat supernatural - wanted to see how the participants would perceive it
• What are the roles of the schema?

  • Remember gist of events but not the details
  • Schemas fill the gap in memory
  • Schemas help us guess whatever info is needed
• Bartletts Findings: Confabulation

  • Confabulation - story become more consistent with participants' own cultural expectations
  • Details unconsciously changed to fit the norms of British Culture
  • New info added in to fill in a memory so it makes sense
• Bartletts Findings: Simplification

  ~The story also became shorter with each retelling as participants omitted info which was not seen as important

  • 330 words to 180 words
• Bartletts Findings: Rationalisation

  • 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.
  • They also added detail and/or emotions