Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall

doi:10.1016/0010-0285(77)90006-8

Cognitive Psychology

Volume 9, Issue 1, January 1977, Pages 111-151

https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(77)90006-8 Get rights and content

Abstract

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.

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^☆: This work was supported in part by NIMH Grants MH-24492 and MH-15828. The notational system and the rewrite rules of the grammar have been changed somewhat from prior work reported by Mandler, Johnson, and DeForest (Note 3).

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Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall☆

Abstract

Children's use of motives and intentionality in person perception and moral judgment

Child Development

Kathlamet texts

The development of memory: Knowing, knowing about knowing, and knowing how to know

Recognition, reconstruction, and recall of narrative sequences by preoperational children

Child Development

A partial grammar of Eskimo folktales

American Anthropologist

Levels of processing: A framework for memory research

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Memory for descriptive and spatial information in complex pictures

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory