Abstract
The role of culturally based knowledge on the recall of stories was examined. Subjects read three stories about people performing everyday script-based activities. The stories were either consistent or inconsistent with the subjects’ own cultural knowledge about those activities. Either 1/2 h or 2 days later, subjects received a copy of each story with certain words and phrases deleted and were asked to fill in the blanks as best they remembered. There were fewer correct recalls after 2 days than after1/2 h, but recall did not differ for the consistent and inconsistent story. However, the recall of the inconsistent story after 2 days showed a substantial increase in the number of errors that reflected the intrusion of the subjects’ own cultural knowledge. The results confirmed findings from similar studies using a modified recognition-memory measure.
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Thanks are expressed to Deana Hensley for writing the stories and to Lawrence Schoen for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.
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Harris, R.J., Sardarpoor-Bascom, F. & Meyer, T. The role of cultural knowledge in distorting recall for stories. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 27, 9–10 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329882
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329882