Oldal 13 [13]
12] Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
humans know, the fewer situations they will be surprised by. However, if
we look at stories as relevant examples for special cases, we understand that
they are important for memory because of the context of the events. When
we hear other peoples stories, we look for similarities with our own stories
and recall those that have strong similarities in theme, purpose or problem¬
solving. Ihe purpose of such highlighting is also to draw conseguences from
a story, to find the differences and compare the elements of one story with
those in our own. Other peoples stories are only stored in our memory if
they relate to, complement or help us to reinterpret our own narrative. The
more unusual, perhaps norm-breaking stories we listen to, the more easily
we can interpret new, unusual situations (Schank, 1999).
Schank’s theory brings us closer to understanding how narrative structure
helps individuals recall content more easily. The processing of events is
supported by aspects such as what happened in a physical sense, where the
events took place, what social situations characterized the sequences of the
events, what impacts were achieved, and what purpose the events served.
Memories are stored in scenes and the purpose of these scenes is to evoke
events (Schank, 1999).
Language is the typical representation system of narratives and has a
fundamental function in memory. Nothing proves this better than the fact that
reconstructing memories before language acquisition is almost impossible. At
the end of infancy, children acquire language through scripted routines and
contextualized actions. Parents and carers are involved in these situations,
and when reflecting on them they recall events in the form of narratives. At
this age, children enjoy listening to stories about everyday events that are part
of their reality, whether it is a summary of the day’s events or a pre-written
narrative based on realistic events in the life of a child of the same age. As
children become older, they become more confident in expressing their
conflicts and feelings in stories, and they begin to identify with roles. By the
age of four, children have mastered the narrative structures of their culture,
which they use to tell their personal stories (Cole & Cole, 2003). Children
gradually learn the framework for storytelling. The recollection of shared
experiences takes place in shared stories in the form of dialogues between
parents, carers and child. At first, parents are more active in narrating events,
but later the parents provide less and less contribution and give space for the
child to reconstruct his or her past experiences in narrative form (Kiraly, 2002).
However, the scripts stored in memory and organized by goals are not
stories. Storytelling is both creation and recall. Creating coherent narratives
helps to keep them in memory, because while creating a story we also reflect
on events and make connections. In the process of story creation, experiences
are organized into units in order to be told, and affective experiences can be
stored and recalled more easily (Schank, 1999).