Bartlett (1932) War of the Ghosts.
To investigate whether the memory of a story is affected by previous knowledge.
To find out if cultural background and unfamiliarity with a story would lead to distortion of memory when it was recalled.
To test if memory is reconstructive and whether people store and retrieve information per expectations formed by cultural schemas.
Procedure
Sample: 20 British participants (7 men, 13 women). The participants were not told the aim of the study, they believed they were being tested on the accuracy of recall.
Bartlett used serial reproduction, which is where participants hear a story or see a drawing and are asked to reproduce it after a short time and then to do so again over a period of days, weeks, months or years.
The story used was a Native American story called ‘’The War of the Ghosts’’ which was unfamiliar to participants and contained unknown names and concepts. The story content was also unfamiliar. The story was selected because it would test how memory may be reconstructed based on cultural schema.
Each participant read the story to themselves twice. The first reproduction happened 15 minutes later. There was no set interval beyond this and participants recalled the story at further intervals from 20 hours to almost 10 years.
Results
Bartlett found that participants changed the story as they tried to remember it. This happened in the early stages (15 minutes) and throughout the further reproductions.
The participants overall preserved the order of events and main themes in the story.
7 of the 20 participants omitted the title, and 10 of the participants transformed the title, for example “War-Ghost story”. Other transformations included changing ‘canoes’ to ‘boats’ and changing the names of the characters.
Participants shortened the story when they reproduced it, from 330 words to 180 words, with the shortest reproduction happening after the longest gap (two years).
Participants also confabulated details, changing unfamiliar parts of the story to familiar ideas in line with their schemas: canoes and paddles became boats and oars, hunting seals became fishing.
Participants rationalised the story, coming up with explanations for baffling parts of the story. For example, in later reproductions, participants missed out the “ghosts” and just described a battle between Native American tribes.
Accuracy in reproduction of the story is an exception rather than a norm of memory. Style, rhythm and precise story construction is very rarely reproduced.
After repeated reconstructions the form of, and items in, the story become stereotyped and do not change much after this occurs. However, with infrequent reproduction, omission of detail, simplification and transformation continues indefinitely.
There is a significant amount of interference with the story from reconstructing it. The details are altered to fit the participant’s own tendencies and interests.
In all recollections of the story, rationalisation reduced material to a form that was more accessible or common to the participant. This could be because the material is initially connected to something else in memory and treated as a representation of this; it reflects the character and individuality of the person recalling the story; and names, places and events are changed to fit with the social group that the participant belongs to.
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 presently 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.
Bartlett didn’t use many experimental controls, asking participants to reproduce the story whenever was convenient. He bumped into one student in the street two years later and asked her to reproduce The War of the Ghosts there and then. The changes in the stories were also down to his own subjective opinion.
Bartlett used the same story for all participants. There is high replicability of his study because the story is standardised, which could allow for re-testing the data.
Familiarisation occurred when the participants’ own cultural expectations developed in retelling. From his conclusions, Bartlett developed the theory of reconstructive memory which helps explain how memories are categorised and interpreted so can be different when recalled.
Sample only consisted of British participants. Generalisability of the findings to a wider population is limited because of the narrow cultural representativeness of the sample.
Bartlett used serial reproduction to test the accuracy of recall over the duration of the study. Reliability of the findings could be considered low because there were no controls in place during the time gaps between serial reproduction testing of participant recall.
State one aim of Bartlett’s (1932) War of the Ghosts study. (1) June 2019
State two results from Bartlett's (1932) War of the Ghosts study. (2) June 2019
Explain one way Bartlett's (1932) War of the Ghosts study could be improved. (2) June 2019
Describe the procedure of Bartlett’s (1932) War of the Ghosts study. (4) June 2017
Explain one strength and one weakness of Bartlett’s (1932) War of the Ghosts study. (4) June 2017
Evaluate Bartlett’s (1932) War of the Ghosts classic study (8) June 2016