To investigate how the memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge and if cultural background and unfamiliarity with a text would lead to distortion of memory when the story was recalled.
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Hypothesis of Bartlett (1932)
Memory is reconstructive and that people store and retrieve information according to expectations formed by cultural schemas
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What story were participants told?
A Native American legend called 'The War of the Ghosts'
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What nationality were the participants?
British
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What is schema?
mental representations that organise our knowledge, beliefs and expectations
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What is social schemas?
metal representations about groups of people
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What do social schemas create?
Stereotypes
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What are self schemas?
Mental representations about ourselves
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What was the first condition of Bartlett (1932)?
One group was asked to use repeated reproduction.
Participants heard the story and were told to reproduce it after a short time and then to do so again repeatedly over a period of time.
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What was the second condition of Bartlett (1932)?
The second group was told to use serial reproduction.
They had to recall the story and repeat it to another person.
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Was there a difference in both conditions on how they recalled the story?
No
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What was the similarity between the two groups?
both conditions changed the story as they tried to remember it
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What is distortion?
When the participants change the story as they try to remember it
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What are the 3 patterns of distortion in the study?
Assimilation, Levelling and Sharpening
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What is assimilation?
The story becomes more consistent with the participants’ own cultural expectations unconsciously.
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What is levelling?
the story also became shorter with each retelling as participants omitted information which was seen as not important.
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What is 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. They also added detail and/or emotions.
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What does Bartlett (1932) study present?
Remembering is not a passive but is an active process where information is retrieved and changed to fit into existing schemas.
From this he came with the theory of reconstructive memory.
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Other cards in this set
Card 2
Front
Aim of Bartlett (1932)
Back
To investigate how the memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge and if cultural background and unfamiliarity with a text would lead to distortion of memory when the story was recalled.
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