Article:Tell me a story: Narrative and intelligence: Chapter 3
From unthinkMedia
According to Shank, people could only understand things that relate to their own experiences. This may be because stories are extremely complex and allow for exponential amounts of interpretations and paths which require us to make choices as we listen. We then map these stories onto our own prior stories, helping to understand them more easily.
During conversation, listeners pay close attention in order to respond with a story that closely relates to yours. I've never consciously realized how true Shank's observations are, till recently when I started separating my self from retrieving my own stories, and watch as a spectators while story after story spilled out of people's mouths. Each person, trying to make sense of the original story, by layering their own story on top of it.
Understanding, according to Shank, consists of the index extraction that match labels of old stories. This means that the what an individual gets out of a story, is based on their existing prior labels. As a result, "no two people can really understand a story in the same way." (pg 59)
What story do i know that relates to the incoming story? We are constantly trying to make sense of the world, so as we observe some do something we examine if their action makes sense or not. In order for any action to make sense we need to relate it to another action from our story bank. As a note, this sense making is relative, and not absolute. People don't share the same first hand stories. "Sameness" is looked at more as the similarities in plans, goals, and themes...
When listening to stories, and asked to give a response, people find different interpretation, and their responses are typically fueled by a pre existing belief, or similar story that they would like to share. Understanding is then subjective, since we all have a unique take of it.
Features of Understanding
- matching indices for story retrieval
- adding aspects of a new story to empty slots of an old one
- seeking further evidence for stories that where only tentatively held as having be correctly understood which will equip us to better deal with the real world.
"Understanding required one to find the correct knowledge structure and to use that structure to create expectations for what events where likely to take place so that new events could be understood in terms of what was normal." (pg 80)
"In a conversation, understanding means being able to respond to a story" (pg 81)
