Understanding Other People's Stories By Roger C. Schank

Reflection #5
“Understanding Other People’s Stories,” is an article written by Roger C. Schank, who was the chair of the computer science department at Yale University until 1946. Schank had also worked as a linguistics and computer science professor at Stanford University. Lastly, Schank moved to serve as the director of the Institute for Learning Science. In this article, the author mainly discussed how everything human being perceives is based on their background and their past experiences. For example, the same information could be provided to two different people, but they will perceive it differently. Schank discussed how memory plays a major role in perceiving and understanding people’s stories, since it is mainly based on the past experiences
in which we relate to to understand people’s stories. We can actually show people that we understand them through relating to their stories using our memories. When we relate to them we can relate to them by telling similar stories from our memory. Similarly, intelligent people tell stories that explains their belief. Generally, when I share a story with a friend, I expect them to relate to it since we are at the same age group and can easily understand and relate easily. I tend to expect the common answer of “ma3lesh” as an answer to all the problems I face. Even Though my friends understand me very well, but they still can not give me advice around the topic I’m discussing.
Schank did not just talk about how stories and memory relate and how people can understand each other, but he also discussed how he evaluated his subjects which are his students.
This was a really important step in the research part of Schank’s finding since he relied on the stories told by his subjects when they were trying to relate to the movie. Schank used their stories to evaluate his subjects since a subjects understanding of a topic could only be evaluated by how they relate the movie to their story. Schank would look at each person’s story and try to relate it to the actual story of the movie. The one I view as the least effective one is the story subject 1 presents in response to the young marriage problem. I feel that subject one was far away with the story he gave, which indicated that he did not really get the real message clearly. The story he presented was too long to give the final message of marrying at a young age is not good. On the other hand, I really like subject two’s response since he was talking about a close since he related the reason of the marriage not the concept of young marriage. What characterizes a response as deep and full of understanding is the closeness to the real story in meaning and in depth. It should also reveal a theme and be close yet clear in the idea as discussed in the article. Schank described the learning process as a way of making connections between the story of the person and your memories; thus, each person learns from
their past experience and from others’ stories and experiences. It is difficult to learn from others’ stories when we cannot make connections with such stories.
I believe that we dwell on our stories more than we do on others’ stories since it is extremely difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. It is hard to live someone else’s experience since it is completely based on their background and past experiences. Similarly, I agree with Schanks saying that no two people can understand the story the same way because it is still based on the factors mentioned above. Even if they are twins, they will not get the same meaning from the story because they will face different things in their lives which will shape them differently.