From the constructive memory of Bartlett to narrative theories of social (Brady Wagoner: The constructive mind. Bartlett's Psychology in Reconstruction. 2017)
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online June, 2020
From the constructive memory of Bartlett to narrative theories of social (Brady Wagoner: The constructive mind. Bartlett's Psychology in Reconstruction. 2017)
The paper is partly a review of a new book by Brady Wagoner on Frederick Bartlett as a theoretician of constructive memory, and partly a survey of what has become of memory constructionism. The basic message of Wagoner analyzing Bartlett is that constructive memory processes are not the exception but the rule. The details of the reemergence of this memory model in modern cognitive psychology are clearly presented by Wagoner. One crucial point is missing, however, that is analyzed in detail by the paper. Bartlett was using stories to support his contructionist theory. This attitude was coming up in the rediscovery of Bartlett as a narrative interpretation of memory schematization. New structural approaches to stories have been emerging in the work of Colby, Rumelhart, and others. Like Bartlett, they were looking for underlying social schematization and constraints, but this time round, there was a stronger linguistic and even structural emphasis. Narrative patterns promised to provide a substantial anchoring point for the otherwise elusive concept of schemata proposed by Bartlett. This turn affiliates memory schematization with theories that treat elementary sociality as a basic, not constructed feature of the human mind.
AndersonJ. R.BowerG. H. (1973). Human associative memory.
Washington:
Winston and Sons.
2.
BartlettF. (1923). Psychology and primitive culture.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
3.
BartlettF. (1925).
Feeling, imaging and thinking. British Journal of Psychology,
16, 16–28.
4.
BartlettF. C. (1916).
An experimental study of some problems of perceiving and imaging. British Journal of Psychology,
8, 222–226.
5.
BartlettF. C. (1917).
Valuation and existence. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
17, 117–138.
6.
BartlettF. C. (1918).
The development of criticism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
18, 75–100.
7.
BartlettF. C. (1920).
Psychology in relation to the popular story. Folklore,
31, 264–293.
8.
BartlettF. C. (1932). Remembering. A study in experimental and social psychology.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
9.
BartlettF. C. (1936). Frederic Charles Bartlett [autobiography]'. In MarchisonC. (Ed.), A history of psychology in autobiography, Vol. III (pp. 39–52).
Worcester, MA:
Clark University Press.
10.
BartlettF. C. (1940). Political propaganda. (Current problems).
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
11.
BartlettF. C. (1941).
Fatigue following highly skilled work. Nature,
147, 717–718.
12.
BartlettF. C. (1951).
The bearing of experimental psychology upon human skilled performance. British Journal of Industrial Medicine,
8, 209–217.
13.
BartlettF. C. (1958). Thinking: An experimental and social study.
London:
Allen Unwin.
14.
BlackJ. B.BowerG. H. (1980).
Story understanding as problem solving. Poetics,
9, 223–250.
15.
BlackmoreS. (1999). The meme machine.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
16.
BrewerW. (2000). Bartlett's concept of the schema and its impact on theories of knowledge representation in contemporary cognitive psychology. In A. Saito (Ed.), Bartlett, culture and cognition (pp. 69–89).
London:
Psychology Press.
17.
BrunerJ. (1973). The relevance of education.
New York:
Norton.
18.
ColbyB. N. (1966).
Cultural patterns in narrative.Science,
151, 793–798.
19.
ColbyB. N. (1973).
A partial grammar of Eskimo folktales. American Anthropologist,
75, 645–662.
20.
ColbyB. N. (1975).
Culture grammars. Science,
187, 913–919.
21.
CraikK. J. W. (1943). The nature of explanation.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
22.
DawkinsD. (1976). The selfish gene.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
23.
EbbinghausH. (1885/1913). Über das Gedächtniss: Untersuchungen zur experimentellen psychologie. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot. English translation by H. A. Ruger and C. E. Bussenius: Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. New York: Teachers College Columbia University. Digital version. Retrieved from https://ia802605.us.archive.org/15/items/memorycontributi00ebbiuoft/memorycontributi00ebbiuoft.pdf
24.
Erdélyi, M. H. (2006). The unified theory of repression. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 499–511.
25.
GauldA.StephensonG. M. (1967).
Some experiments related to Bartlett's theory of remembering. British Journal of Psychology,
58, 39–49.
26.
GraesserA. C. (1996). Models of understanding text.
Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
27.
GraesserA. C.ClarkL. F. (1986). Structure and procedures of implicit knowledge.
Norwood, NJ:
Ablex.
28.
HeadH. (1920). Studies in neurology, in two volumes.
London:
Oxford University Press.
29.
KintschW.van DijkT. (1978).
Toward a model of text comprehension and prcduction. Psychological Review,
85, 363–394.
30.
LászlóJ. (2014). Historical tales and national identity: An introduction to narrative social psychology.
Routledge,
London.
31.
MandlerJ. M.JohnsonM. S. (1977).
Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology,
9, 111–151.
32.
MorinO. (2016). How traditions live and die.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
33.
MoscoviciS. (1961/2008). Psychoanalysis. Its image, its public.
London:
Polity Press
34.
MoscoviciS. (1984). The phenomenon of social representations.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
35.
PaulI. H. (1959). Studies in remembering: The reproduction of connected and extended verbal material.
New York:
International Universities Press.
36.
PaulI. H. (1967).
The concept of schema in memory theory. Psychological Issues,
5, 219–258.
37.
PléhC. (1987). On formal- and content-based models of story memory. In HalászL. (Ed.), Literary discourse. Aspects of cognitive and social psychological approaches (pp. 100–112).
Berlin:
DeGruyter.
38.
PléhC. (2003).
Narrativity in text construction and Self construction. Neohelicon,
30, 187–205.
39.
ProppV. (1928/1958). Morphology of the folktale.
Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
40.
RumelhartD. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In: Spiro, B. C.R. J.BrewerW. F. (Eds.), Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 33–58).
Hilsdale, N.J.:
Erlbaum.
41.
RumelhartD. E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In: BobrowD. G.CollinsA. N. (Eds.), Representation and understanding (pp. 211–236).
New York:
Academic Press.
42.
RumelhartD.OrtonyD. (1977). The representation of knowledge in memory. In: AndersonR. C.SpiroR. J.MontagueW. E. (Eds.), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge (pp. 98–135).
Mahlah, N.J:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associate.
43.
Saint-LaurentC.de, BrescoI.de LunaS. H. A.WagonerB. (2017).
Collective memory and social sciences in the post-truth era. Culture & Psychology,
23(2), 147–155.
44.
SaitoA., Ed. (2000). Bartlett, culture and cognition.
London:
Psychology Press.
45.
SchankR. (1975). The structure of episodes in memory. In BobrowD. G.CollinsA. N. (Eds.), Representation and understanding (pp. 237–272).
New York:
Academic Press.
46.
SchankR.AbelsonR. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures.
New York:
Halsted.
47.
SelzO. (1922). Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums.
Bonn:
Cohen.
48.
SimonH.NewellA. (1972). Human problem solving.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
49.
SperberD. (1985).
Anthropology and psychology: Towards an epidemiology of representations. Man,
20, 73–2.
50.
SperberD. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach.
Oxford:
Blackwell.
51.
SperberD.HirschfeldL. A. (2004).
The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
8, 40–46.
52.
SquireL. R. (2004).
Memory systems of the brain: A brief history and current perspective. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory,
82, 171–2.
53.
ThorndykeP. W. (1977).
Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse. Cognitive Psychology,
9, 77–110.
54.
ThorndykeP. W.YekovichF. R. (1980).
A critique of schema-based theories of human story memory. Poetics,
9, 23–49.
55.
WagonerB. (2013).
Bartlett’s concept of schema in reconstruction. Theory & Psychology,
23(5), 553–575.
56.
WagonerB. (2015). Qualitative experiments in psychology: the case of Frederic Bartlett's methodology. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 16(3); FQS, 2015, FQS. Retrieved from www.qualitative-research.net/
57.
WagonerB. (Ed.). (2017). Handbook of culture and memory.
Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
58.
WagonerB. (2017). The constructive mind. Bartlett's psychology in reconstruction.
Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
59.
WagonerB.GillespieA. (2014).
Sociocultural mediators of remembering: An extension of Bartlett’s method of repeated reproduction. British Journal of Social Psychology,
53, 622–639.
