Remembering the Gist

Psy315 - Class 17

(This page last updated 12 October, 2006.)

 In most verbal memory tasks, memory for the exact wording is poor, even when memory for the meaning is good. We usually remember "gist" without the details.

Memory Construction

• Many aspects of a situation not recorded in memory because of lack of attention.
• Other aspects lost over time.
• When recollecting, many of these lost bits can be reconstructed.
• Examples of Memory Construction
  • Brewer & Treyens (1981)
    • Subjects thought they saw books in office.
  • 1992 plane crash in Amsterdam
    • Subjects thought they saw film on TV
  • Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm
    • Subjects thought they saw word related to the other words on list.

Memory Schemata

• Schema: a complex memory representation containing generic knowledge
  • Specifies what is normally expected in a given situation
• Examples:
  • restaurant schema
  • hospital schema
  • movie theater schema

Frederick Bartlett

• British psychologist
• Studied how people remembered stories.
• Started with a story taken from Native American folklore
  • "War of the Ghosts"
  • Very different from the 1930's British culture that his subjects knew.
  • Gist of the story usually preserved.
    • Many details lost or changed.
      • Especially details that were difficult to fit into the readers' cultural expectations.
    • Sequence of events became more logical and understandable.
  • Bartlett's subjects recorded the story into memory in such a way that it fit with the schemata that were already there.

Relevant Website

• Bartlett's "War of the Ghosts"

next class: Forgetting
 
Psych 315: Cognitive Psychology Kyle Cave Psychology Dept. U. Mass.