ABSTRACT
The initial concern in this chapter is with the issue of accuracy in recall of connected discourse. It is very important to note that the accuracy referred to is not verbatim or even gist reproduction, but the absence of gross semantic distortions and importations of ideas possibly not even consistent with or inferrable from the original text's semantic representation. Reconstructive theory predicts that, for subjects in the Cognitive Interaction condition, schemata concerning knowledge of how interpersonal relations usually work will be activated and the information in the story will be related to those schemata. Reconstructive processes must operate on some data base. Specification of details of discourse likely to be stored must be interfaced with stored rules for inferential reconstruction. A basic tenet of Reconstructive Theory is that the degree of interaction with pre-existing cognitive structures is a continuous variable. The degree can range from near total differentiation to total subordination of new information to many old structures.
