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CLOA Studies
CLOA Studies
CLOA Studies
Models of Memory 2
● Bartlett (1932)
○ Aim: To investigate how social schemas affect the recall of a story
○ Methodology:
■ 20 British participants (17 men and 3 women)
■ Participants were asked to read a Native American folktale
called “War of the Ghosts”
■ There were 2 conditions; serial and repeated reproduction,
and both conditions were asked to read the story twice
■ Serial Reproduction→Were asked to repeat the story to
another participant in groups of 10
■ Repeated Reproduction→Were asked to repeat the story
but couldn’t look at the original
■ The participants were asked to repeat the story at different
intervals over the course of 10 years
○ Results:
■ Participants distorted the story based on their cultural
schema
■ 3 patterns of distortion:
■ Assimilation→The story became more consistent with
the participant’s culture
■ Leveling→The story became shorter as the participant
removed parts that seemed unimportant
■ Sharpening→The order of the story changed
● Brewer and Treyens (1981)
○ Aim: To investigate the role of schema in encoding and retrieval
of episodic memory
○ Methodology:
■ 86 university psychology students
■ Participants were told to wait in a room that was set up to
look like an office
■ The room contained a few objects ⇒ objects typically seen
in an office and objects one wouldn't usually see in an office
(toy top and skull)
■ The participants were then given a questionnaire, the
important question was "Did you think that you would be
asked to remember the objects in the room?", 93% said no
■ The participants were then asked to recall the objects
■ There were 3 conditions:
■ Written condition ⇒ Participants were asked to write
a description of the room as if they were describing it
to someone that has never seen it
■ They were then given a booklet with a list of
objects and were asked to rate how sure they
were the object was in a room on a scale of 1-6
⇒ 61 objects were in the room and 70 were not
■ Drawing condition ⇒ Participants were given an
outline of the room and were asked to draw objects
they could remember
■ Verbal recall condition ⇒ A list of objects was read out
to the participants and they were simply asked if the
object was in the room or not
○ Results:
■ When participants were asked to recall by writing or
drawing, they were more likely to remember items that are
congruent with their schema of an office (expected items in
an office were more often recalled), while items
incongruent with their schema of an office (unexpected
items in an office) were not often recalled
■ When asked to select items on a list, they were more likely
to identify incongruent items
● Loftus and Palmer (1974)
○ Aim: To investigate whether the use of leading questions would
affect the estimation of speed
○ Method:
■ 45 participants
■ IV: the critical verb used in the question
■ DV: estimation of speed
■ 5 conditions; "smashed", "collided", "bumped", "hit",
"contacted"
■ Participants watched a video of a car crash and then were
asked to answer a questionnaire
○ Results:
■ Speed estimations →"smashed" 40.8mph, "collided" 39.3
mph, "bumped" 38.1 mph, "hit" 34mph, "contacted" 31.8mph
■ The critical verb in question consistently affected the
participants' answers to the question
■ The researchers believed that it was due to the response
bias, i.e. the participants didn't know the exact speed so
they used verbs like "smashed" as an indicator
■ The verb in the question changed the participant's mental
representation of the accident, i.e. the verb "smashed"
activated a cognitive schema of a severe accident
■ Distortion of memory is due to reconstruction that is
triggered by the critical verb
■ In line with Bartlett's suggestion of reconstructive memory
due to schema processing
● Loftus and Pickrell (1995)
○ Aim: To determine if false memories of autobiographical events
can be created through the power of suggestion
○ Method:
■ 31 males and 21 females
■ Before the study, a parent or sibling of the participant was
contacted and was asked "Can you tell 3 childhood
memories of the participant?" and "Do you remember a
time when the participant was lost in the mall?"
■ Participants then received a questionnaire with 4
memories they had to write about, if there was a memory
they didn't remember, they were simply told to write so
■ The participants were interviewed twice over 4 weeks and
were asked to recall as much as possible about the 4 events
■ They were asked to rank how confident they were about
the memories on a scale of 1-10
■ Participants were debriefed and were asked to guess which
one was the false memory
○ Results:
■ 25% recalled the false memory but were less confident
about it than about other memories