Barlett (1932) War of the Ghosts

Aim, sample, procedure, results and conclusion

Bartlett (1932) investigated whether memory is reconstructive and influenced by cultural schemas.

Sample included 20 British participants who believed they were being tested on recall accuracy. He employed serial reproduction with the unfamiliar Native American story ‘The War of the Ghosts’, asking participants to reproduce it after 15 minutes and at later intervals up to 10 years.

Bartlett found that memory was altered through omissions (details left out), rationalisations (making unfamiliar elements logical, for example, ghost violence as tribal battle), and familiarisations (changing details to fit cultural knowledge, for example, “fishing” instead of “hunting seals”). Over time, the story became shorter, simplified, and stereotyped, showing that memory is not a direct record but reconstructed to fit existing schemas

Generalisability

Low generalisability as the sample is ethnocentric due to it consisting of 20  British participants, (7 men and 13 women). This is ethnocentric as the participants were from an individualistic culture. The conclusion that schemas (experiences and culture for example) affect the recall if the unfamiliar War of the Ghosts story is unrepresentative.

Reliability

The study was somewhat reliable because the War of the Ghost story was standardised. However, the time intervals between the serial reproductions were not the same, this does not allow for the results between participants to be checked for consistency as the time intervals between the recalls varied.

Applications

Bartlett's 1932 study conclusions have useful applications. A significant amount of details are altered to fit the participant schemas (previous knowledge, interpretations, expectations and motivations). The Cognitive interview uses ‘Change order’ technique where witnesses re- imagine the scene in an unfamiliar order, alongside ‘ change perspective’ where people recall from another person's view. Both of these Cl aspects reduce the use of schemas.

Validity

The internal validity was low, Bartlett's 1932 study did not have objective controls, i.e. The time between reading and recall for the reproduction of the story was vague, i.e is one day 24 hours exactly or the following morning. The lack of control of these situational extraneous variables limited the cause (familiary) and effect (memory accuracy). 

However, the study has high ecological validity as recalling a story reflects real- life scenarios and has mundane realism.

Ethics

A strength of Bartlett's 1932 study was that it had high ethics. The participants were not told the aim of the study, they believed they were being tested on the accuracy of recall. Although this violated the BPS (2009) guidelines of consent and deception, the participants being naive to the aim prevents demand characteristics and increases the validity of the conclusion that schemas impact recall.