A significant researcher into schemas is Bartlett (1932). He introduced the idea of schemas in his study called “War of Ghosts”. His aim was to investigate the effect of culture on memory. He had the participants (all from an english background) read a Native American folktale and then recall it later. As for the results, the story was changed, there were no odd or supernatural things added into the stories that the people re-wrote, it was a straightforward story of a fight and death. This story relates to the effect of culture on memory because Bartlett’s work demonstrated how schemas originating in one particular culture is re-called. His participants relied on schematic knowledge, acquired within their culture to understand and later recall a story from a different culture. Memory is very inaccurate, Bartlett’s study helped to explain through the understanding of schemas when people remember stories, they typically omit some details, and introduce rationalisations and distortions, because they reconstruct the story so as to make more sense in terms of their knowledge, the culture in which they were brought up in and experiences in the form of schemas.
A further study demonstrating cultural influence on schematic knowledge is by Rogoff and Wadell (1982). The aim was to determine whether non-western children would