The cultural life script as cognitive schema: How the life script shapes memory for fictional life stories

Abstract

We tested, across three studies, the effect of the cultural life script on memory and its phenomenological properties. We focused, in particular, on the mnemonic effects of both schema-consistency and frequency in the life script. In addition to testing recognition (in Study 1) and recall (in Studies 2 and 3), we also collected remember/know judgments for remembered events (in Studies 1 and 2) and memory for their emotional valence (in Study 2). Our primary finding was that, across all three studies, higher-frequency events were more memorable than lower-frequency events, as measured through either recognition or recall. We also attained three additional, complementary effects: First, schema-inconsistent events received remember ratings more often than schema-consistent events (in Study 2, with a trend to this effect in Study 1); second, where an event's emotional valence was inconsistent with the life script, memory for its valence was reconstructed to fit the script (in Study 2); and, third, intrusions in recall were disproportionately for life script events (in Study 3), though that was not the case in recognition (in Study 1). We conclude that the life script serves as a cognitive schema in how it shapes memory and its phenomenological properties. Memory, 22, th December 2013December , available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080December /09658211.2013 This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in 4The Cultural Life Script as Cognitive Schema: How the Life Script Shapes Memory for Fictional Life StoriesThe cognitive schema (i.e., a mental structure that organizes one's knowledge and assumptions about the world) represents one of the oldest and most influential concepts in cognitive psychology (see Neisser, 1976, for an overview of early work on schemata). Schemata have been found to structure cognition across a range of contexts, including, and most importantly for the present purpose, to play a role in structuring memory. Bartlett (1932) was the first investigator to bring widespread attention to the effect of schemata on recall, with his investigations demonstrating that, in recounting a Native American folk tale, English participants reconstructed the story to better fit the Western schema of a typical narrative structure (see Bergman & Roediger, 1999, for a more recent replication of Bartlett's findings). Much of the early experimental work on the cognitive underpinnings of memory likewise examined the role of schemata (see for example, Anderson & Pichert, 1978; Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Sulin & Dooling, 1974).In the present investigation, we followed in the vein of a more recent experimental tradition on the influence of schemata on memory. The prototype for this line of research is perhaps Brewer and Treyens' (1981) investigation on room schemata and memory. There, participants' memory was tested for the contents of a graduate student's office. Brewer and Treyens found that, in both recognition and recall, there was a positive correlation between ...