Article:Remembrance of Things Passed: Story Structure and Recall

From unthinkMedia

Contents

Article Description

Taken from article: "An analysis of the underlying structure of simple stories is presented. It is claimed that this type of representation of stories is used to form schemata which guide encoding and retrieval. A type of tree structure containing basic units and their connections was found to be adequate to describe the structure of both single and multi-episode stories. The representation is outlined in the form of a grammar, consisting of rewrite rules defining the units and their relationships. Some transformational rules mapping underlying and surface structures are discussed. The adequacy of the analysis is first tested against Bartlett’s protocols of “The War of the Ghosts.” Then a developmental study of recall is presented. It is concluded that both children and adults are sensitive to the structure of stories, although some differences were found. Finally, it is suggested that the schemata used to guide encoding and recall are related but not identical and that retrieval is dependent on the schemata operative at the time of recall." (pg 111)

Goal

The authors of this paper wish to have the ability to predict precisely what people will and will not remember from connected discourse. They achieve this by a method of attack on a theory of story schemata which has been to develop a grammar which will relate the surface structure of stories to the underlying structures on which schemata are based.

  • stories vary in the degree to which they follow an ideal format, and many of the ways in which units are rearranged or deleted have yet to be explored.
  • With a set of grammatical rules in hand, we will define a well-formed story as one which follows the assigned rules.

story schema

  • "idealized internal representation of the parts of a typical story and the relationships among those parts."
  • "set of expectations about the internal structure of stories which serves to facilitate both encoding and retrieval."
  • acts as a general framework within which detailed comprehension processes take place
    1. directs attention
    2. helps the listener keep track of progression
    3. tell listener when the story is complete or incomplete and if it is ready to be stored

referring to these schema during encoding increases comprehension and recall.

Bartlett suggested that "various omissions, distortions, and other changes in memory over time can be explained on the grounds that people use a story schema as a set of retrieval cues. When they cannot recall a particular aspect of a story, they can use the schema to reconstruct what might have occurred at that point."

How we construct story schemata

  • from listening to many stories
  • knowledge about the sequencing of events in stories (how they typically begin and end)
  • experience
  • knowledge about causal relations and various kinds of action sequences

tree structure

Terminal Nodes

  • represent either a STATE or an EVENT
  • typically correspond directly to some surface expression
  • internal: an emotion or state of mind, thoughts plans
  • external: actions of characters and changes of state in the world

Connections between Nodes

  • connected by three types of relationship: AND, THEN, and CAUSE.
  • AND connects two nodes (simultaneously, overlapping)
  • THEN connects two temporarily ordered nodes.
  • CAUSE first node provides a reason for the occurrence of the second.
  • CAUSE connects two nodes in a tighter, more integrated, structure than does either THEN or AND.

Basic Nodes

  • can appear only in certain places in the tree structure
  • more constraints on their format and connections
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