Reconstructive memory: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:13, 27 March 2020

Revision as of 04:02, 14 April 2020

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===Schema===

[[Schema (psychology)|Schema]]s are generally defined as mental information networks that represent some aspect of collected world knowledge. Frederic Bartlett was one of the first psychologists to propose Schematic theory, suggesting that the individual's understanding of the world is influenced by elaborate neural networks that organize abstract information and concepts.<ref name=Bartlett>{{cite web|url=http://iscte.pt/~fgvs/Bartlett,%20Experiments.pdf|title="Frederick Bartlett", Some Experiments on the Reproduction of Folk-Stories, March 30, 1920|publisher=}}</ref> Schema are fairly consistent and become strongly internalized in the individual through [[socialization]], which in turn alters the recall of [[episodic memory]]. Schema are understood to be central to reconstruction, used to fill in gaps to provide a plausible narrative.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Bartlett|first=Sir Frederic Charles|url=https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WG5ZcHGTrm4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&ots=BDi-luIlkO&sig=rt8pd3tqn3_xUBr1qelbdEYgMVI#v=onepage&q&f=false|title=Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology|last2=Bartlett|first2=Frederic C.|last3=Bartlett|first3=Frederic Charles|date=1995-06-30|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-48356-8|language=en}}</ref>

==== Jean Piaget's theory of schema ====

[[File:Jean Piaget in Ann Arbor.png|thumb|right|Jean Piaget influenced the study of reconstructive memory with his theory of schema]]

[[Piaget's theory#Assimilation and accommodation|Piaget's theory]] proposed an alternative theoryunderstanding of schema based on the two concepts: '''assimilation''' and '''accommodation'''. Piaget defined assimilation as the process thatof humansmaking employsense to internalizeof novel and unfamiliar information by using previously learned information to make sense of it. In order to assimilate, Piaget defined a second cognitive process that served to integrate new information into memory by altering pre-existingpreexisting schematic networks to fit novel concepts, what he referred to as Accommodationaccommodation.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~broberts/Block,+1982.pdf|author=Jack Block|title=Assimilation, Accommodation, and the Dynamics of Personality Development|year=1982|doi=10.2307/1128971|jstor=1128971|journal=Child Development|volume=53|pages=281–295|number=2}}</ref> For Piaget, these two processes, accommodation and assimilation, are mutually reliant on one another and are vital requirements for people to form basic conceptual networks around world knowledge and to add onto these structures by utilizing preexisting learning to understand new information, respectively.

According to Piaget, schematic knowledge organizes features information in such a way that more similar features are grouped together so that when activated during recall the more strongly related aspects of a memory will be more likely to activate together. In extension to this theory, Piaget proposed that the schematic frameworks that are more frequently activated will become more strongly consolidated and thus quicker and more efficient to activate later.<ref>Auger, W.F. & Rich, S.J. (2006.) Curriculum Theory and Methods: Perspectives on Learning and Teaching. New York, NY: Wiley & Sons.</ref>

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==== Frederic Bartlett's experiments ====

[[Frederic Bartlett]] originally tested his idea of the reconstructive nature of recall by presenting a group of participants with foreign folk tales (his most famous being "War of the Ghosts"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dlvalenc/PSY307/LINKS/GHOSTWAR.HTM|title="War of the Ghosts", March 5, 2012|publisher=}}</ref>) with which they had no previous experience. After presenting the story, he tested their ability to recall and summarize the stories at various points after presentation to newer generations of participants. His findings showed that the participants could provide a simple summary but had difficulty recalling the story accurately, with the participants' own account generally being shorter and manipulated in such a way that aspects of the original story that were unfamiliar or conflicting to the participants' own schematic knowledge were removed or altered in a way to fit into more personally relevant versions.<ref name=Bartlett /> For instance, allusions made to magic and Native American mysticism that were in the original version were omitted as they failed to fit into the average Westerner schematic network. In addition, after several recounts of the story had been made by successive generations of participants, certain aspects of the recalled tale were embellished so they were more consistent with the participants' cultural and historical viewpoint compared to the original text (e.g. Emphasis placed on one of the characters desire to return to care for his dependent elderly mother). These findings lead Bartlett to conclude that recall is predominately a ''reconstructive'' rather than ''reproductive'' process.<ref name=":0" />

James J. Gibson built off of the work that Bartlett originally laid down, suggesting that the degree of change found in a reproduction of an episodic memory depends on the manner in which that memory is later perceived.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Gibson | first1 = J.J. | year = 1929 | title = The Reproduction of Visually Perceived Forms | url = http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/gibson%20(1929)%20the%20reproduction%20of%20visually%20perceived%20forms.pdf | journal = Journal of Experimental Psychology | volume = 12 | issue = 1| pages = 1–39 | doi=10.1037/h0072470}}</ref> This concept was later tested by Carmichael, Hogan, and Walter (1932) who exposed a group of participants to a series of simple figures and provided different words to describe each images. For example, all participants were exposed to an image of two circles attached together by a single line, where some of the participants were told it was a barbell and the rest were told it was a pair of reading glasses. The experiment revealed that when the participants were later tasked with replicating the images, they tended to add features to their own reproduction that more closely resembled the word they were [[Priming (psychology)|primed]] with.