Stories Analysis

Which information was more likely to be recalled? Which information was likely to be forgotten? Was there better memory for meaning or for specific phrases? Facts vs. events? etc. etc. In particular, report findings and support each finding with examples from the transcripts.

The gist, or general meaning of the passage, rather than superficial aspects, is what was more likely to be remembered, in both immediate and delayed recall summaries. Ashcraft refers to this as “content accuracy”. This is supported by the participants’ summaries, (both immediate and delayed). All participants remembered (a) the number of individuals, as well as the canoe - the canoe with five asking the other two on land to join them in fighting, (b) the arrows in the canoe, (c) the actual fighting, and (d) the individual dying at the end. (e) In addition, all participants remembered the general, if not the specific, settings. Not everyone remembered the specifics such as (a) names (b) details of settings (c) conversations. Results from Bartlett’s study support this finding, which is that omissions involving specific names or events result in retellings that are considerably shorter.

Another aspect of Bartlett’s results is that there is a tendency to normalize and rationalize occurrences in the successive recalls. This finding, too, was supported in the participants’ summaries. For example, the term “ghosts” is mentioned by only three participants in the immediate recall. Then later, in the delayed recall, one of those three participants failed to mention it. No one else mentioned this term, even though, in the original story, it is the “ghost” that that had shot the Indian. Apparently, the term was also in the title. (Obviously, I was not one of the three that remembered the term in the first place!)

According to Ashcraft, what we already know exerts a strong influence on what we remember about new material. This statement is also supported in the participants’ summaries, both immediate and delayed. All participants were able to retell the detail of the arrows in the canoe. This would fit in with the idea that our general knowledge about Indians is that they fought with arrows. Even though this was not specifically stated, it was implied when one of the young men said “We are going up the river to make war on the people.” When one of the young men replied, “I have no arrows” the other young man responded, “Arrows are in the canoe.” Had the participants not had this existing knowledge about fighting with arrows, they might have thought, “So what if they have or do not have any arrows.” According to Bartlett, an active organization of past reactions or past experiences can be referred to as a “schema”, which is a stored framework or body of knowledge about some topic. He also characterizes this as an “effort after meaning”. Another term for this is “reconstructive memory”. In other words, we remember by combining elements from original material together with existing knowledge.

Only once in the story was the term Indian used, and that was in reference to only one individual (“…that Indian has been hit.”) However, several participants made assumptions about the nationality of both of the individuals. For example, one participant stated that the two men were from a particular “tribe”. Another participant referred to them as “Native Americans”. A third participant assumed they were both Indians, based on other referents in the story such as arrows and canoes. Another participant refers to them as “natives of a particular village”. Also, six participants used the term “village” even though that term was never mentioned in the story. Instead, the term, “town” was used. Indians would be more likely associated with “village” than “town”, in my opinion. These two examples of added vocabulary relates to Ashcraft’s reference to “thematic effects”, in which inferences were drawn rather than remembering the passage on its own terms.

Ashcraft discusses propositional representations in terms of memory recall. He states that two events in a story that are connected by “and” or “then” should be less well recalled than two connected by a cause. He states that when stories are not particularly well-formed, as the “Ghosts” story, inversions and distortions in recall occur more frequently. According to Mandler and Johnson, the story grammar and propositional representation of this particular story showed how failures in recall could be related to structural “defects “in the original story, and how additions served to “restore” the story to a more usual, ideal form. Examples of such “additions” could be one participant’s decision to say that the young man had been “dreaming”. Another example of distortion in recall is the fact that several participants did not mention the part about the ghosts. Because the young man was described as dead at the end, and it is hard to know how a “ghost” could actually kill someone, then perhaps those two “facts” could not be reconciled and therefore, the ghost part was left out in order to restore the story to a more usual, ideal form.

Ashcraft also discusses scripts in memory. According to Schank and Abelson, our understanding of stories is guided by our scripted knowledge of a particular situation. For example the story states, “He got in the canoe”; however, the retellings were not exact in that regard. Instead, participants used wordings such as, (a)“The second man agreed to join them and followed to their village.” (b)“The other Native American went along with them.” (c)”The other young man traveled with the others.”

Ashcraft also states that a script does not prepare you for unusual or atypical events, thus when retelling a story, the atypical events are specifically stored during comprehension, since they are details that could not have been anticipated by the script. This was quite evident, based on the unusualness of the ending, when something black came out of his mouth and he was dead. All participants spoke of the death of the young man, and all but one mentioned something black coming out of his mouth. This was the case in all immediate and delayed retellings.

It is interesting to note that the story retellings were basically the same in the 4th and 7th week, yet both of these versions were noticeably shorter than the immediate recall. This continues to lend support to the notion that once material has been stored it is possible to retrieve. If however, it has not been properly stored in the first place, it can be “forgotten”.