Key Study: Bartlett (1932)
Aim: To investigate the effect of cultural schemas on recall of a culturally unfamiliar story
Participants: 20 male undergraduate students from the University of Cambridge in the UK
Procedure: Bartlett instigated a procedure known as serial reproduction, in which one participant read the story then reproduced it in writing; this was then read to a second person who then wrote his own memory of the story which was then read to a third person who then produced his own version of the story and so on.
Results: Bartlett found that the resulting stories bore little similarity to the original Native American folk tale. The changes made by the participants included:
- Omission: Key details of the story were ignored or missed out, particularly unfamiliar or unpleasant details such as a contorted face or black coming out of a mouth. Participants even omitted the key idea that ghosts were fighting which is surprising as this is the title of the story. Ghosts were soon dropped from the re-telling of the story as they do not fit with the way that adult males see the world, particularly in relation to war; details such as a contorted face were omitted as they may have caused unpleasant memories.
- Assimilation and sharpening: Story details were changed to suit the participants’ own cultural schemas e.g. ‘canoes’ became ‘boats’; ‘paddling’ became ‘rowing’. Details such as the spirit wound were re-interpreted as a flesh wound with words such as ‘therefore’ and ‘because’ inserted to explain the events.
- Levelling: The story became shorter - the original story was approximately 350 words and the participants’ version was around 180 words
Conclusion: Cultural schemas contribute to the reconstructive nature of memory i.e. memory is not a passive state in which events are recorded like a camera would record them, instead memory is an active process in which pre-existing information and expectations may interfere with the accuracy and reliability of the memory
Evaluation of Bartlett (1932)
Strengths
- Bartlett’s study was one of the first pieces of research to highlight the role of schema in reconstructive memory e.g. two people who witness the same event may give very different accounts of what they have seen
- Bartlett’s procedure (serial reproduction) is replicable which means that it could be repeated to check for reliability
Limitations
- This is very dated research: university students in the UK are much more aware of wider multi-cultural issues today than they were in the 1930s which means that the results may lack temporal validity
- Bartlett’s sample was small and limited to an elite demographic of university students who were all male which makes the findings difficult to generalise
Key terms:
- Cultural schemas
- Serial reproduction
- Reconstructive memory
