Pearson BTEC National Applied Psychology: Book 1 Revised Edition

Specification terms Confabulation When details are added to a memory to ll in the ‘gaps’, to make recall meaningful. Rationalisation When parts of a memory are distorted to t your schema, to make the memory meaningful. Reconstructive memory Pieces of stored information are reassembled during recall. The process is guided by our schema so that we produce a ‘memory’ that makes sense (even if it is inaccurate). Schema Mental frameworks of beliefs and expectations that in«uence cognitive processing. They are developed from experience. Shortening When part of a memory is le¡ out, so what remains is shorter. What is reconstructive memory? Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (1932) argued that memories are reconstructions (constructing the memory again). We don’t record events in memory and then reproduce them later like a video recorder would. Instead, we store fragments of information. When we recall something, we build (reconstruct) these fragments into a meaningful whole. The result is that memory is not a totally accurate record of what happened. Role of schema in memory A schema is a mental structure or ‘package’ containing our stored knowledge of an aspect of the world. We have a schema for mother, teacher, birthday party, rework, etc. – for people, objects, events. Schema are based on past personal experiences and also on shared cultural experiences. For example, most people in a culture have similar expectations about birthday parties – they usually involve food, presents and fun. Bartlett believed our schema affect memory by in«uencing what we store and later recall. He used the story on the le¡ to investigate this. As an Inuit folk tale, the War of the Ghosts has ideas that are unfamiliar to you because they’re not part of your experience. When you try to recall the story, it changes to become more familiar. The memory is reconstructed to t your existing schema. This makes the memory more meaningful to you and easier to recall. Schema can reconstruct memories in three main ways: Shortening Parts of a memory that don’t t in with your schema are le¡ out (e.g. unfamiliar details) so what you remember is shorter. For instance, in Barlett’s research, the supernatural elements of the story were very unfamiliar to the participants. So they were unable to recall them. Rationalisation Parts of a memory are recalled but in a distorted way that ts your schema. So your memory of an event changed because it didn’t match relevant schema (but now it does). This happens so that strange or unfamiliar memories make more sense. In Bartlett’s research, people replaced unfamiliar words with familiar ones (e.g. ‘arrows are in the canoe’ became ‘guns are in the boat’). Confabulation Parts of a memory are invented to ll in ‘gaps’. This isn’t deliberate (it’s not ‘lying’) and it doesn’t happen randomly. It is guided by your schema to (again) make better sense of the memory. Some participants in Bartlett’s research recalled details that were not in the story because they made it more meaningful (e.g. ‘They stopped the boat and tried to li¡ him out’). The War of the Ghosts Would you like to hear a story? One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and while they were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war cries, and they thought, ‘Maybe this is a war party’. They escaped to the shore and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe, and they said: ‘What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on the people.’ One of the young men said, ‘I have no arrows.’ ‘Arrows are in the canoe,’ they said. ‘I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not know where I have gone. But you,’ he said, turning to the other, ‘may go with them.’ So one of the young men went, but the other returned home. And the warriors went on up the river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the water, and they began to fight, and many were killed. But the young man heard one of the warriors say, ‘Quick, let us go home; that Indian has been hit.’ Now he thought, ‘Oh, they are ghosts.’ He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot. So the canoes went back to Egulac, and the young man went ashore to his house and made a fire. And he told everybody and said, ‘Behold, I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick.’ He told it all and then he became quiet. When the sun rose, he fell down. Something black came out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried. He was dead. If you’re wondering what that was about, read on! Source: Bartlett (1932) Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, reproduced with permission of Cambridge University Press through PLSclear. Content area A1: Cognitive approach Key concept 3: Reconstructive memory Making links to the key assumptions Assumption: Behaviour is a product of information processing Reconstructive memory shows one way that information processing operates. To reconstruct a memory, the ‘fragments’ of memory have to be mentally processed to make sense of them. This processing depends on schema, so the memory does not stay the same but changes in some way. Assumption: The brain can be compared to a computer Explain how reconstructive memory links to this assumption [HINT: it doesn’t have to support the assumption. Perhaps reconstructive memory challenges the idea that the brain is like a computer – you decide] (see page 10). 16 Unit 1: Psychological approaches and applications Copyright: Sample material

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