1. Discuss the influence of meaning and schemata on memory. How influential was the work of Bartlett in motivating work in this area of memory research?

Key Points:

• The work of Bartlett, especially his 1932 work in which he asked English participants to read and then recall a Native American folk tale, ‘The War of the Ghosts’, which came from a culture that was very different from their own.
• Bartlett proposed that we possess schemata (or schemas), which he described as active organizations of past experiences.
• These schemas help people to make sense of familiar situations, guiding expectations and providing a framework within which new information is processed.
• People seemingly have trouble understanding things if they cannot draw upon memory, or schemas, for previously acquired knowledge.
• Memory aids understanding; and understanding aids memory.
• Credit should also be received for pointing out that, although our previous
• knowledge is a very valuable asset, it can also lead to errors (for example, from chapter 11, the work of Owens, Bower and Black, 1979, could be cited).
• Credit should also be received for mentioning that people have many expectations about how conventional activities will proceed, and these provide schemas or scripts that can both aid and mislead memory.