ONSTRUCTIVE P ROCESS If you were to carefully examine the initial explorations about memory processes, you will perhaps conclude that memory primarily consists of reproduction of stored materials. This view was held by Ebbinghaus and his followers who emphasised the quantity of information that can be stored in the memory and judged its accuracy by matching the contents of storage and reproduction. If the reproduced version of the stored material showed any deviation, it was seen as an error and a case of memory failure. This storage metaphor of memory implied that the memory was a passive occurrence of learnt material that has been transported to its long-term storehouse.
This position was challenged by Bartlett in the early thirties who contended that memory is an active process and all that we have stored undergoes continuous change and modification. What we memorise is influenced by the meaning we assign to the stimulus material and once it is committed to our memory system, it cannot remain in isolation from other cognitive processes. In essence, therefore, Bartlett saw memory as a constructive and not a reproductive process. Using meaningful materials such as texts, folk tales, fables, etc.
Bartlett attempted to understand the manner in which content of any specific memory gets affected by a person’s knowledge, goals, motivation, preferences and various other psychological processes. He conducted simple experiments in which reading of such stimulus materials was followed by fifteen minutes break and then the participants of his experiment recalled what they had read. Bartlett used the method of serial reproduction in which the participants of his experiments recalled the memory materials repeatedly at varying time intervals. While engaging in serial reproduction of learned material his participants committed a wide variety of ‘errors’ which Bartlett considered useful in understanding the process of memory construction.
His participants altered the texts to make them more consistent with their knowledge, glossed over the unnecessary details, elaborated the main theme and transformed the material to look more coherent and rational. In order to explain such findings, Bartlett invoked the term schema , which according to him ‘was an