recall:“In the morning, however, he became very ill, and his friends gathered
round [...]. Then he writhed and shrieked and his friends werefilled with
terror. At last he became calm. Something hard and black came out of his
mouth, and he lay contorted and dead”(p. 72). Bartlett conducted a number of
comparable experiments over the years, using both texts and images. He also
tested what happens to information during a chain of recalls, when the story
recovered by one subject became the starting information for another subject.
In the latter case, the changes were such that the resulting stories“would hardly
ever be connected with the original by any person who had no access to some
intermediate version”(Bartlett, 1932, p. 171). His experiments led Bartlett to the
idea that our memory makes use ofmental schemata.Aschemais“an active
organization of past reactions, or of past experiences”(p. 201). Schemata play a
crucial rule in cognition:“together with the immediately preceding incoming
impulse, it [the schema] renders a specific adaptive reaction possible”(p. 207).
As a result of the mind using schemata, information undergoes substantial
change during encoding and storage. Typical tendencies that Bartlett observed
during the repeated and chain-like reproduction of stories include omission,
abbreviation, rationalization,fluidity of proper names and titles (of stories), bias
toward the concrete (at the cost of arguments or reasoning), and a loss
of individual characteristics (in favor of commonplace characterizations and
epithets) (pp. 124–9, 171–6).
Stories with multiple versions are familiar to every reader of the New
Testament. Now imagine that instead of“The War of the Ghosts,”Bartlett
had given a story about Jesus to his students. The story recalled by one of the
students would be as follows.“When Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his
mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever; he touched her hand, and the fever left
her, and she got up and began to serve him.”Another student would give this
version of the episode:“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the
house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-
in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came
and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she
began to serve them.”The third student would remember the story like this:
“After leaving the synagogue he entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-
in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. Then he
stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up
and began to serve them.”
Even though we have not seen the original story, with some knowledge of
Bartlett’s experiments, we are not very surprised by the results. The exact
names and even the number of the characters change across the three versions.
According to one version, Jesus saw the sick women, in another version the
disciples told about her; in the third version they asked Jesus about her. The
healing methods are also slightly different, involving touching the hands,
lifting by the hand, or only uttering words. The conclusion is similar in all
68 Cognitive Science and the New Testament