Bartlett was able to show how each retelling was a unique
reconstruction of the story rather than a
reproduction of the original. Subjects tended to replace unfamiliar elements of the story with objects drawn from their own experience. Bartlett concluded that in coming to understand the story, his students tended to make use of pre-existing mental structures or
schemata, which proved essential both for originally comprehending the story and for subsequent recall.
The notion of schemata is central as well to Jean Piaget's (1896–1980) theory of intelligence. The Swiss psychologist undertook pioneering work on childhood intellectual development. From years of careful observations of and conversations with children and watching them function in problem-solving activities, Piaget argued that cognitive development is an adaptive process of schema correction by means of assimilation and accommodation. We assimilate new information by fitting it within existing cognitive structures. Where preexisting schema cannot incorporate a new experience, we adjust our mental structures to accommodate them. For Piaget, learning is not a passive activity of replication and data storage but an active process of invention and creation. Piaget's resultant genetic epistemology describes how increasingly complex intellectual processes are built on top of more primitive structures in regularly occurring stages.
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