ABSTRACT
Frederic Charles Bartlett (1886-1969) is perhaps best known for his contributions within cognitive science. In particular his work on memory (e.g. 1932) is generally considered to have constituted an important foundation upon which memory research has subsequently been developed with the advent of the ‘cognitive revolution’ of the 1960s. Bartlett’s emphasis on research using a naturalistic setting and ‘ecologically valid’ (i.e. true/close to real-life situations; also see Brewer, Chapter 6) experimental tasks led him to reject the classical Ebbinghaus approach to the study of memory, which centres on the memorising of nonsense syllables. Instead he conducted a series of experimental studies using a broader range of materials and methods (including his famous method of ‘serial reproduction’ of the story of the ‘War of the Ghosts’), to analyse the manner and the matter of the changes made in the recalls, rather than the number of accurate recalls. This experimental method (i.e. stressing naturalistic settings and ecologically valid tasks) has been integrated into, for example, the ‘ecological approach’ in memory research (e.g. Neisser, 1967).
