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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 problemsolving. 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).
