Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory

by Roger C. Schank

Schank takes a look at the human side of intelligence: thinking, memory, imagination, imagery, and mythology. A bold attempt at showing how the mind assimilates knowledge and how that knowledge is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684190494
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Atheneum
• Length: 253 Pages
• Weight: 1.19 lbs.

Customer Reviews

People's primary way of learning is through hearing stories

This book focuses on how people learn and it is one of the most interesting books that I have ever read. I think the best way to learn what a non-fiction book is about is through a series of quotes from the book. So here is a small sampling of interesting ideas from the book: "In effect, once she decided to see their situation as one of betrayal, she didn't need to see it any other way. Aspects of the relationship between the two people unrelated to betrayal, or that contradicted the notion of betrayal, were forgotten. Seeing a particular story as an instance of a more general and universally known story causes the teller of the story to forget the differences between the particular and the general. ....In other words, the concept of betrayal becomes what she knows about this situation. It controls her memory of the situation so that new evidence of betrayal is more likely to get admitted into memory than contradictory evidence."(P.148) "...Is this relationship, however, an example of betrayal? Certainly, the teller relates the story so that betrayal is an accurate description. But betrayal was used as a skeleton story around which the actual story was constructed. In other words, by using a skeleton story for betrayal, the teller could only construct a story of betrayal. All other aspects of the story were left out. But why, for example, could the teller not have told a story of "devotion"? Only small changes would be needed to make this a story of devotion - a statement that he still loves her and hopes that she will return to her former self or one that shows he values and will support her in her role as mother. ....We want to see the situations that we encounter in terms that are describable to others. We only have a short time in which to tell these stories. So, even if the fit with those stories is not exact, seeing and describing complex stories in terms of standard stories provides an easy shorthand method for communication." (P.148-149) "The key point here is that once we find a belief and connected story, no further processing, no search for other beliefs need be done. We rarely look to understand a story in more than one way." (p.73) "The skeletons we use indicate our point of view. Storytelling causes us to adapt a point of view. With this adaption comes a kind of self-definition, however. We are the stories we tell. ...As we come to rely upon certain skeletons to express what has happened to us, we become incapable of seeing the world in any other way. The skeletons we use cause specific episodes to conform to one another. The more a given skeleton is used, the more stories it helps form begin to coher in memory. Consequently, we develop consistent, and rather inflexible points of view." (P.170) "An incident is remembered in terms of how it is seen in the first place. That is, labeling is in many respects an arbitrary process. ...And, of course, even that last categorization is arbitrary since one person might characterize the