Reconstructive memory (2)

Question 1

What is the “War on the Ghosts Study”?

Answer 1

• Created by Bartlett the study demonstrated the weakness of memory recall.
• It depicted a native American story and people would have to read and then recall the story 15 minutes later

Question 2

What was a weakness of the “War on the Ghosts Study”?

Answer 2

-The study was highly unreliable due to bad methods, inconsistent testing and lack of generalisability

Question 3

What is a schema?

Answer 3

A schema is a mental structure in memory showing how you believe things should be - eg football for a Brit is with a round ball but for an american with an egg as they are wrong

Question 4

What is schema theory and how does it apply to the “War on the Ghosts Study”?

Answer 4

The theory was that out schemas alter memories so they make sense to us
This meant when people recalled the “war on ghosts study” they may eliminate native american culture such as Canoes and replace them with boats

Question 5

How have beliefs about memory changed?

Answer 5

Psychologists originally thought memories were flawless and all you had to do was reproduce them. After many studies such as Bartlett they came to the conclusion memories are reconstructed and so may be altered

Question 6

What anomilie has been found to increase memory?

Answer 6

There is contrasting evidence that some memories are very accurate for example in the ghosts study some people recalled the more odd things such as “something black came out of his mouth” which also goes against the schema theory of eliminating the abnormal

Question 7

Application to eye witness testimony:

Answer 7

• It shows memory is not identical and memories can be lost or made up
• It shows memorys can be changed by people on purpose
• It shows schemas may alter what you remembered happened.(e.g A robber would be carrying a gun not a banana.)

Question 8

Who came up with Reconstructive Memory?

Answer 8

Bartlett, 1932

Question 9

What does the theory of Reconstructive Memory argue?

Answer 9

Memory is an imaginative reconstruction of past events influenced by how we encode, store and retrieve information
Memory is not like a blank tape but is changed when we recall it

Our attitudes and responses to events change our memory for those events

Retrieval of stored memories thus involves an active process of reconstruction using a range of information

Question 10

What are Schemas?

Answer 10

Schemas are parcels of store knowledge or a mental representation of information about a specific event or object.

Every schema has fixed information, and variable information.

Question 11

What do we use Schemas for?

Answer 11

We use schemas that we already have to interpret information and incorporate these into our memory

This means recall is an active reconstruction of an event strongly influenced by previously stored knowledge, expectations + beliefs

Question 12

What is Confabulation?

Answer 12

Confabulation is when information is added to fill in the gaps to make a story/ make sense

Question 13

What are False Memories?

Answer 13

Memories that not true, but made to seem true in order to deceive people

Question 14

What is the War of the Ghosts folk tale Experiment?

Answer 14

The ‘war of the ghosts’ folk tale surrounds a story of young men from Euglac, resulting in a paranormal death.

Each ppt read the story twice, and repeated reproduction was used to test the effect of time lapse on recall. Bartlett was interested in the form the reproduced story would take.

20 ppts recalled the story after several minutes, weeks, months and years- the longest time lapse being 6.5 years.

Bartlett found that the story became considerably shortened, objects discussed in the story became more familiarised (e.g. ‘hunting seals’ to ;fishing’), and many ppts didn’t grasp the role of the ghosts in the story, rationalising their presence in some way

Bartlett concluded that memory is reconstructed each time it is recalled

Question 15

Why did Barlett use the War of the Ghosts folk tale for his research?

Answer 15

He chose it for 4 reasons:

1. It was culturally unfamiliar to ppts, so he could examine the transformations that the story may make when reproduced by ppts
2. It lacked any rational story order
3. The dramatic nature of the story would encourage visual imaging
4. The conclusion was somewhat supernatural, and Bartlett wanted to see how ppts would perceive and image this.

Question 16

What are the Strengths + Weaknesses of Bartlett’s research?

Answer 16

S: Bartlett’s research is considered as strong evidence in support of reconstruction theory of memory because he has repeated his reproduction experiments using 8 different stories on different participants and found the same familiarisation and transformations in line with schemas.

W: Bartlett’s experiments had a lack of control and standardisation in procedures so it is more difficult to re-conduct the war of the ghosts research to re-establish if memory is reconstructed.

Question 17

How does Reconstructive Theory have Practical Application?

Answer 17

Barlett’s theory has practical application as it could be useful in the real world because it emphasises to courts that eyewitnesses might reconstruct memories using schemas. So EWT alone should not be used to convict a criminal.