Week 1
Lecture 1: Confusing stories
Our mind is filled mainly with stories, stories through which we perceive reality,
including ourselves.
Social sciences perspective
Schema refers to an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences,
which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic
response (Bartlett).
A schema is an organized mental model of a complex set of information; this
model will make it easier to structure information when setting it down for
memory storage and will also facilitate its retrieval during recall (Parkin).
Imposing a schema on a text simply means viewing the text from a certain
perspective (Pichert & Anderson). A kind of selective perception.
Frank mentioned the experiment that people see two balls and we’ll make a story
ourselves to construct a certain causality (f.e. they are chasing each other).
(Michotte)
Remembering self (Kahneman)
- experiencing self: how life is lived (moment-to-moment well-being)
- remembering self: how life is told (the story we later recall and use to
guide decisions).
Example with a study (Redelmeier & Kahneman) about patient’s memories of
painful medical treatments.
Patients’ total pain judgement correlated with:
1. peak intensity of pain;
2. intensity of pain recorded in last 3 minutes (peak-end rule)
3. but not with the length of the procedure (duration neglect)
So:
- Stories in our own mind determine how we fill in the gaps in the stories of
others (schemata, see text Emmott and Alexander)
- Stories in our mind determine our perspective and what we remember
- We construct stories (causality)
- The story structure of our experiences determine how we evaluate our
experiences (remembering self)
Humanities perspective
Social sciences e.g. persuasion & processing
Humanities: attention for style & obstruction
Russian formalism Shlkovsky, Art as technique:
- devices (priomi)
- deautomatisation
- obstruction
,(De)habitualization: Shklovsky's central argument is that art frees us from the
automatic, routine perception of everyday life. By making things seem strange,
striking, or more difficult to perceive, art enables us to experience the world
anew rather than merely recognize it.
Czech structuralism:
- Foregrounding (Mukarovsky): the use of devices and techniques which
‘push’ the act of expression into the foreground so that language draws
attention to itself (Cuddon).
- Deviation
- Parallelism
- Internal deviation: ‘norm’ in the text
- External deviation: ‘norm’ outside of the text
Tomashevsky, other art forms:
- Fabula: the chronological order of events
- Syuzhet: the way the story is told/presented (doesn’t need to be
chronological)
o In medias res: beginning a story in the middle of the action
o Retardation: delaying important information or key events in order
to create suspense or maintain audience interest.
o Parallel plots: multiple storylines that unfold simultaneously within
the same narrative.
o Ellipsis: omitting a period of time or certain events from the
narrative.
o Repetition: the recurrence of images/events/themes to create
emphasis or coherence.
Neo-formalism (David Bordwell)
- Syzuhet is an interaction between events and style (editing,
cinematography, sound etc)
- Two forms:
o Functional form: the idea that every formal element serves a specific
function within the overall work.
o Deautomatization: the process of making familiar objects, events or
experiences appear strange or unfamiliar, encouraging viewers to
perceive them more consciously.
What does foregrounding do?
- Surprise effect (Van Peer)
- Attention (Van Peer)
- Retardation (Miall & Kuiken, Sopcak)
- Affective impact (Miall & Kuiken)
- Appreciation (Dixon, Van Peer, Hakemulder)
- Refamilarization (Fialho)
Research methods: self-report questionnaires, text manipulation, EEG,
indepth interviews.
Matters because it can stimulate creativity and looking at the world with a
beginner’s mind.
,So, two eyes always see more than one:
- Use of methods of the social sciences to test hypotheses from the
humanities and humanities insights about stimuli to nuance models from
the social sciences.
, Schemata – Emmott & Alexander
Schemata are cognitive structures representing generic knowledge, i.e.
structures which do not contain information about specific entities, instances or
events, but rather about their general form. Readers use schemata to make
sense of events and descriptions by providing default background information for
comprehension, as it is rare and often unnecessary for texts to contain all the
detail required for them to be fully understood. Usually, many or even most of the
details are omitted, and readers’ schemata compensate for any gaps in the text.
As schemata represent the knowledge base of individuals, they are often
culturally and temporally specific, and are ordinarily discussed as collective
stores of knowledge shared by prototypical members of a given or assumed
community. Schemata are dynamic to the extent that they accumulate details
and are altered in the course of experience. If changing circumstances and new
events contradict existing schemata or make them appear inadequate in a
relatively minor way, they can be “tuned” to accommodate new generalizations
The term “schema” is often used as a superordinate label for a broad range of
knowledge structures, including frames, scenarios, scripts and plans. “Schema” is
also used as a synonym for “frame” to refer to mental representations of objects,
settings or situations.
A restaurant schema/frame would contain information about types of
restaurants, what objects are to be found inside a restaurant etc.
The term “scenario” is also sometimes used for situational knowledge.
A “script” is a temporally-ordered schema; it describes a reader’s knowledge of
stereotypical goal-oriented event sequences “that define a well-known situation”
A restaurant script would contain knowledge of the actions and sequence of
ordering food, paying bills etc.
In addition to a sequence of events, most scripts have further “slots” to describe
the “roles” (customers, waiters, chefs, etc.), “props” (menu, table, food, money,
bill, etc.), “entry conditions” (customer is hungry, restaurant has food, etc.) and
“results” (customer is no longer hungry, restaurant has less food, etc.) within the
script.
A “plan” consists of knowledge about sets of actions needed to accomplish
objectives and is used in non-stereotypical situations where there is no adequate
script available.
Linguists, psychologists and narrative scholars employ schema theory to account
for the interpretation of a text where the discourse itself does not provide all the
information necessary for the discourse to be processed.
The general notion of gap-filling has long been recognized in literary studies.
Sometimes referred to as “spots of indeterminacy,” and “expositional gaps.”
The relationship between texts and schemata is two-way: while schemata tend to
lay the ground rules for how a discourse will be interpreted, discourses
themselves may prompt readers to “tune” existing schemata and create new
ones.
In narrative studies, schema theory has been important not only for its role in
explaining gap-filling in reading, as discussed above, but also in relation to a
Lecture 1: Confusing stories
Our mind is filled mainly with stories, stories through which we perceive reality,
including ourselves.
Social sciences perspective
Schema refers to an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences,
which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic
response (Bartlett).
A schema is an organized mental model of a complex set of information; this
model will make it easier to structure information when setting it down for
memory storage and will also facilitate its retrieval during recall (Parkin).
Imposing a schema on a text simply means viewing the text from a certain
perspective (Pichert & Anderson). A kind of selective perception.
Frank mentioned the experiment that people see two balls and we’ll make a story
ourselves to construct a certain causality (f.e. they are chasing each other).
(Michotte)
Remembering self (Kahneman)
- experiencing self: how life is lived (moment-to-moment well-being)
- remembering self: how life is told (the story we later recall and use to
guide decisions).
Example with a study (Redelmeier & Kahneman) about patient’s memories of
painful medical treatments.
Patients’ total pain judgement correlated with:
1. peak intensity of pain;
2. intensity of pain recorded in last 3 minutes (peak-end rule)
3. but not with the length of the procedure (duration neglect)
So:
- Stories in our own mind determine how we fill in the gaps in the stories of
others (schemata, see text Emmott and Alexander)
- Stories in our mind determine our perspective and what we remember
- We construct stories (causality)
- The story structure of our experiences determine how we evaluate our
experiences (remembering self)
Humanities perspective
Social sciences e.g. persuasion & processing
Humanities: attention for style & obstruction
Russian formalism Shlkovsky, Art as technique:
- devices (priomi)
- deautomatisation
- obstruction
,(De)habitualization: Shklovsky's central argument is that art frees us from the
automatic, routine perception of everyday life. By making things seem strange,
striking, or more difficult to perceive, art enables us to experience the world
anew rather than merely recognize it.
Czech structuralism:
- Foregrounding (Mukarovsky): the use of devices and techniques which
‘push’ the act of expression into the foreground so that language draws
attention to itself (Cuddon).
- Deviation
- Parallelism
- Internal deviation: ‘norm’ in the text
- External deviation: ‘norm’ outside of the text
Tomashevsky, other art forms:
- Fabula: the chronological order of events
- Syuzhet: the way the story is told/presented (doesn’t need to be
chronological)
o In medias res: beginning a story in the middle of the action
o Retardation: delaying important information or key events in order
to create suspense or maintain audience interest.
o Parallel plots: multiple storylines that unfold simultaneously within
the same narrative.
o Ellipsis: omitting a period of time or certain events from the
narrative.
o Repetition: the recurrence of images/events/themes to create
emphasis or coherence.
Neo-formalism (David Bordwell)
- Syzuhet is an interaction between events and style (editing,
cinematography, sound etc)
- Two forms:
o Functional form: the idea that every formal element serves a specific
function within the overall work.
o Deautomatization: the process of making familiar objects, events or
experiences appear strange or unfamiliar, encouraging viewers to
perceive them more consciously.
What does foregrounding do?
- Surprise effect (Van Peer)
- Attention (Van Peer)
- Retardation (Miall & Kuiken, Sopcak)
- Affective impact (Miall & Kuiken)
- Appreciation (Dixon, Van Peer, Hakemulder)
- Refamilarization (Fialho)
Research methods: self-report questionnaires, text manipulation, EEG,
indepth interviews.
Matters because it can stimulate creativity and looking at the world with a
beginner’s mind.
,So, two eyes always see more than one:
- Use of methods of the social sciences to test hypotheses from the
humanities and humanities insights about stimuli to nuance models from
the social sciences.
, Schemata – Emmott & Alexander
Schemata are cognitive structures representing generic knowledge, i.e.
structures which do not contain information about specific entities, instances or
events, but rather about their general form. Readers use schemata to make
sense of events and descriptions by providing default background information for
comprehension, as it is rare and often unnecessary for texts to contain all the
detail required for them to be fully understood. Usually, many or even most of the
details are omitted, and readers’ schemata compensate for any gaps in the text.
As schemata represent the knowledge base of individuals, they are often
culturally and temporally specific, and are ordinarily discussed as collective
stores of knowledge shared by prototypical members of a given or assumed
community. Schemata are dynamic to the extent that they accumulate details
and are altered in the course of experience. If changing circumstances and new
events contradict existing schemata or make them appear inadequate in a
relatively minor way, they can be “tuned” to accommodate new generalizations
The term “schema” is often used as a superordinate label for a broad range of
knowledge structures, including frames, scenarios, scripts and plans. “Schema” is
also used as a synonym for “frame” to refer to mental representations of objects,
settings or situations.
A restaurant schema/frame would contain information about types of
restaurants, what objects are to be found inside a restaurant etc.
The term “scenario” is also sometimes used for situational knowledge.
A “script” is a temporally-ordered schema; it describes a reader’s knowledge of
stereotypical goal-oriented event sequences “that define a well-known situation”
A restaurant script would contain knowledge of the actions and sequence of
ordering food, paying bills etc.
In addition to a sequence of events, most scripts have further “slots” to describe
the “roles” (customers, waiters, chefs, etc.), “props” (menu, table, food, money,
bill, etc.), “entry conditions” (customer is hungry, restaurant has food, etc.) and
“results” (customer is no longer hungry, restaurant has less food, etc.) within the
script.
A “plan” consists of knowledge about sets of actions needed to accomplish
objectives and is used in non-stereotypical situations where there is no adequate
script available.
Linguists, psychologists and narrative scholars employ schema theory to account
for the interpretation of a text where the discourse itself does not provide all the
information necessary for the discourse to be processed.
The general notion of gap-filling has long been recognized in literary studies.
Sometimes referred to as “spots of indeterminacy,” and “expositional gaps.”
The relationship between texts and schemata is two-way: while schemata tend to
lay the ground rules for how a discourse will be interpreted, discourses
themselves may prompt readers to “tune” existing schemata and create new
ones.
In narrative studies, schema theory has been important not only for its role in
explaining gap-filling in reading, as discussed above, but also in relation to a
