Two men came to a bank. A canoe came. Five men invited them to a war. One man replied and said that he doesn't have weapon. "We have arrows in the boat", they said. The man then told them that he can't go since his family had no idea where he went. He suggested the other man go with them. So the war began. People were dead fighting. The man heard someone said "Let's get out of here quickly. The Indian was hurt." The man felt really strange because he wasn't sick at all. He knew they must be ghosts. He went home later and told the others the story. He said that he had been to the war with the ghosts and saw people die. The next morning when the sun rose he fell down and black smoke came out of his mouth. People jumped up and cried. He was dead.
Two men came near to a bank. They saw a boat coming. When they were asked to go to a war, one man suggested another man go with them. The people in the boat persuaded him by saying that they've got arrows for the battle. During the war, many were killed. The man didn't feel sick or hurt. "Let's get out of here" he heard someone say. He left with the other men. He told people about the battle. He said that those people must be ghosts. The sun arose and he fell to the ground. Black smoke came out of his mouth. He was dead.
Two men came to a bank of a river. They saw a boat come around. One of the men in the boat asked them to join a battle. One of the two replied that they've got no weapon. The men in the boat said there are arrows in the boat. One of the two men said he need go home to tell his family where he went, he asked the other man to go with those warriors. During the battle, he saw people wounded and killed. But he didn't get hurt at all. Suddenly, he heard someone say that they should run away. So he ran with them and then he came home later. He told his family about the war. He said, I think they are ghost. After the word, he fell down on the ground. And smoke came out of his mouth. The man was dead.
The yellow mark indicates the part that appeared in the 1st but missed from the 2nd recall.
The blue mark indicates the part that was not in the 2nd but reappeared in the 3rd recall.
Cognitive economy can be observed in my recall. Numbers, names, adjectives, and figurative are often omitted when I was trying to retrieve information from semantic memory. The first recall retained most of the redundant information. These detailed descriptions are missing in the second and third recall. In general, information that is related closely to the storyline and key points that make the narrative meaningful is recalled most smoothly.
The amount of information and detail level maintained by the second and third recall was similar. This might indicate that the long term memory is stable and over time, little variation occurs during retrieval.
It seems that the unusual and unreasonable details, if retrieved at all, are done more easily and accurately. For instance, "the black smoke came out from the mouth". Compared with other additive, the color of the smoke is recalled accurately every single time. However, there was a tendency to normalize, as is stated in the Bartlette study, the irregular events. I tried to make the story more sensible by omitting the part that the two men went to a river to hunt seals. To me, it seems that hunting seals at a river is rare and unreasonable. Moreover, I even added things that are not in the original story. Smoke is not mentioned anywhere in the story, but I made this up every time I recalled.
One strange thing about the recall was that at the 3rd time, I seemed to have picked up some detail that was omitted in the second recall. This might be considered as evidence that the stored information is not really "gone" from the memory. If something is not retrieved successfully, it's more likely that the information was not activated rather than "disappearing" from the storage.
It's also interesting to notice that the manner I recalled this story was rather visual. While working on the task, I was trying really hard to pick up the visual cues stored in the memory. And the completion of the task resembles depicting a series of pictures, as if I was going through a set of comics. It's possible that the details I gathered were merely deduction from the images that I was "seeing" in my head when I completed the recall task.
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