Repeated reproduction: Back to Bartlett. A French replication of narrative and an extension to proverbs

Abstract

The objective of this article is to replicate, for the first time in the French language, an original experiment of F.C. Bartlett (1920, 1932) with the same narrative he used: “The War of the Ghosts”. Work on proverbs describes it as a matter socially elaborate calling on a practical thought. Thereby, in addition, this article proposes to study proverbs from a psychosocial point of view by using the method of repeated reproduction. Even if the proverb and the story are similar in their characteristics, they differ in their lengths and when one uses more the implicit, the other use more the metaphor. The third objective is the comparison between memory processes for the proverb and the story. Eighteen dyads met twice to reconstruct their memories of these materials. The results highlight the importance of the cultural dimension in reconstructing memory and confirm that the strangeness of the proverb and narrative complicates their understanding. They also reveal similarities and differences in the processes of reconstructing the narrative through the different replicas of the original experiment.

Full text

Article
Repeated reproduction:
Back to Bartlett.
A French replication
of narrative and an
extension to proverbs
Pauline Mercier and
Nikos Kalampalikis
GRePS (EA 4163), University Lumie
`re Lyon 2, France
Abstract
The objective of this article is to replicate, for the first time in the French language, an
original experiment of F.C. Bartlett (1920, 1932/1997) with the same narrative he used:
“The War of the Ghosts”. Work on proverbs describes it as a matter socially elaborate
calling on a practical thought. Thereby, in addition, this article proposes to study prov-
erbs from a psychosocial point of view by using the method of repeated reproduction.
Even if the proverb and the story are similar in their characteristics, they differ in their
lengths and when one uses more the implicit, the other uses more the metaphor. The
third objective is the comparison between memory processes for the proverb and the
story. Eighteen dyads met twice to reconstruct their memories of these materials. The
results highlight the importance of the cultural dimension in reconstructing memory
and confirm that the strangeness of the proverb and narrative complicates their under-
standing. They also reveal similarities and differences in the processes of reconstructing
the narrative through the different replicas of the original experiment.
Keywords
Bartlett, proverb, narrative, memory, culture, repeated reproduction
Corresponding author:
Nikos Kalampalikis, University Lyon 2 – Institute of Psychology, 5 Avenue P. Mende
`s-France, Bron 69676,
France.
Email: nikos.kalampalikis@univ-lyon2.fr
Culture & Psychology
2020, Vol. 26(3) 500–527
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1354067X19871197
journals.sagepub.com/home/cap

Introduction
The common sense thinking and memory processes
Many authors in social sciences (Bartlett, 1932/1997; Brockmeier, 2012; Bruner,
2000, 2015; Gavillet, 2003; Guscetti, 2011; Jodelet, 2006, 2015; Mieder, 1982;
Stalder, 2010; Veyne, 1992; Wertsch, 2002) highlight the fact that in society we
shape and assign meanings to our experiences using existing cultural materials. The
work of F.C. Bartlett have been invested by many studies interested in the cultural
anchoring of psychological processes (Bangerter & Lehmann, 1997; Bruner, 2002;
Edwards & Middleton, 1987; Johnston, 2001; Kalampalikis, 2002; Roediger III,
Bergman, & Meade, 2003; Wertsch, 2002). The investigation of ordinary thinking
culturally located is largely inspired by social representations approach (Haas &
Jodelet, 2007; Jodelet, 2015; Jodelet & Haas, 2014; Kalampalikis, 2019; Moscovici,
2012, 2013). Links between this approach and Bartlett’s work (see Kashima, 2000;
Saito, 2003; Wagoner, 2017a, 2017b) show the close relationship between social
memories and social representations. Moscovici expressed very clearly that there
was a link between the theory of social representations and conventionalization
“(...) his analysis of the conventionalization helped me to better understand the
process of objectification” (Moscovici, 2013, p. 261). Social representations are
“perception programs, constructs with the status of naive theory, serving as a
guide for action and a grid for reading reality” (Jodelet, 2015, p. 38). The purpose
of social representations is to familiarize oneself with the unknown. When we are
confronted with a new object or phenomenon, we have an irrepressible need (if we
feel concerned) to assign its meanings. On the one hand, we do this for our cog-
nition, but also to be able to discuss this meaning with others because social
representations are also formed in interaction (Jodelet, 2015). To understand
this novelty, we will first select the information we are interested in according to
cultural and normative criteria, that is to say that we only retain what is in agree-
ment with the value system of our group (Moscovici, 2013). In a second step, we
will link that information between them in order that it forms a coherent whole, a
“figurative core” (Moscovici, 2013). Finally, a phenomenon of naturalization will
occur and allow us to associate characteristics of reality to this novelty: these three
stages constitute the objectification. To put meaning on this novelty, we will look
in what we already know and thanks to this comparison, we will attribute to
novelty a value, a quality, a name, a classification, and consequently a meaning: it
is anchoring (Kalampalikis & Haas, 2008). This analogy is retroactive, the old and
the new will be impacted by this new relationship. Themes of culture, social repre-
sentations, and collective memory are intimately linked. Although social psychology
(in a broad sense) has not been very touched by the questions surrounding the rap-
prochement between culture and psychology, this is not the case with the branch of
social representations which is interested in “the foundations, the functioning and the
psychological and social functions of common sense thinking” (Jodelet, 2002, p. 113,
personal traduction). Interest is similar but it’s different levels of analysis, “Culture,
Mercier and Kalampalikis 501

then, can be taken as referring to a broader network of representations held together
as an organized whole by community” (Duveen, 2007, p. 545). Culture has a struc-
ture, this structure has a functional role in the community that carries it, and this
same community has an effect on this structure. Here, we consider culture as a
dynamic object and as a place where its actors play an active role.
1
Bartlett’s work
has shown these aspects since in these definitions of group and culture, he describes a
dynamic vision “in which culture not only provides a stable image of the present and
its relation to the past, but also projects the group into a future” (Duveen, 2007, p.
552). Thus, our culture and representations it contains are inscribed in various forms
of temporality: past, present, and future.
In a famous series of experiments in 1920, Bartlett observed that Cambridge
students transformed an American story, inspired by Franz Boas (1901), into a
story closer to own their culture. Bartlett theorized a set of experimental results
with two key concepts—social conventionalization and schema—and proposed
two types of reproduction, one to investigate the reconstruction of memory in
groups (serial) and the other to study it over time (repeated). Schemas are not just
entities that make the organism work, but something that the organism can work
with (Cole & Cole, 2003). Remembering is to make a link between the schema and
“specific traces, and the latter are usually represented by images.” (Larsen &
Berntsen, 2003, p. 92). The image selects pieces of schema (Bartlett, 1932/1997).
We select the images through the concept of attitude it will guide and influence
the process of remembering. As Larsen and Berntsen (2003) explain, the role of
attitude in remembering has been somewhat sidelined, even though attitude seems
to be there from the beginning to the end of those processes. Indeed, the attitude
toward the performance of recall (hesitation, doubt, ...) and toward the material
(disgust, fear, ...) affects the encoding and the recall of information (Larsen &
Berntsen, 2003). Schema refers to an active process, for example, if we read a
text, we will not accept it passively, but we will interpret it according to tendencies
of our groups.
Social conventionalization is “a process by which cultural materials coming into
a group from outside are gradually worked into a pattern of a relatively stable kind
distinctive of that group” (Bartlett,1932/1997, p. 280). This conventionalization,
considered as a process of cultural change (Duveen, 2007), is composed of four
stages: assimilation, simplification-elaboration, retention of details, and the social
construct, knowing that they do not appear in a pre-established order. In the
assimilation, only the material that already had an appropriate background in
the culture of the receiving group is retained (Bartlett, 1932/1997). After this pre-
selection, the receiving group will name the material and it will be classified in a
schema. Through nomination (Kalampalikis, 2002, 2007; Saito, 2003), the material
will obtain an identity, will receive even more meaning and will be more embodied
by the receiving group. These new associations will result in an affective attitude
toward meaning (not to the material as such). A detail will become central and the
group will associate to it other details (persistent tendencies), it is in this way that
the material is transformed into something more familiar: it is conventionalized.
502 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

Simplification aims to change the strangeness into something similar, but familiar
(Bartlett,1932/1997). What has been retained after the persistent tendencies will
generate other details: those which will not allow to better understand the material
will be reworked or forgotten (Saito, 2003). Elaboration has several forms: interpo-
lation and concretization. Interpolation will make the material more coherent and
logical through processes of inference or rationalization (Bartlett, 1932/1997). When
it is possible, concretization makes things more concrete by taking, for example, a
particular type of phrasing (Bartlett,1932/1997). After these two steps, two more are
added, retention of details and the social construct. The group will remember details,
to all appearances unimportant. This detail could be, for example, a clear mark of
the external cultural origin to the material for the group. In this way, while the rest is
conventionalized, these details are kept in mind (Saito, 2003). These details, which
resurface in memory as a central point of memory, can be in the form of images,
words, or sentences (Bartlett,1932/1997; Larsen & Berntsen, 2003). The second addi-
tional step is the social construct. The group will transform an element, and in return
this element will change the social schema in which it is classified as well as the
practices of the group in which this element was embodied. These different stages
(assimilation, simplification-elaboration, retention of details, and social construct)
do not occur in a chronological order, they are simultaneous (except the assimilation
which tends to be at the beginning). Conventionalization is linked to memory
and schema since they represent the influence of the past in the present.
Conventionalization and schema formations make it possible to understand cultural
transformations. If two groups are in contact, practices or materials will be con-
ventionalized. This new form will come from the “shaping” of the new practice by
the group based on persistent trends (Cole & Cole, 2003).
After his experimentations, Bartlett found that the story was shortened, its style
and its rhythm were very rarely faithfully reproduced, its details were quickly ste-
reotyped and that the sentences and the events were modified in such a way that they
appear more familiar to the social group to which the subject belongs. His work has
influenced many studies including studies on rumor (Allport & Postman, 1947) and
more recently on the reconstruction of popular symbols in the modern Egyptian
society (Awad, 2016; see Wagoner, 2017a). More broadly, Bartlett has been studied
from the angle of “narrative approach” (Bruner, 2015), the “socio-cultural
approach”, the theory of social representations (Moscovici, 2012, 2013; Saito,
2003), and with the “anthropological psychology” (Rosa, 1996). However, no rep-
lication of his method of repeated reproduction has been published in the French
language until now (for the adaptation of his method of serial reproduction in a
French language, see Cerisier, Haas, & Kalampalikis, 2017).
The narrative and the proverb
Bartlett used the tale: “The Story of Ghosts”.
2
He chose it because it allowed com-
munication between people (Rosa, 1996) for the following reasons. This story was
far removed from the subjects’ culture; the style of writing was unusual; it gave a
Mercier and Kalampalikis 503

confused aspect to the story, as if the elements had no relation between them; the
story had a dramatic and supernatural aspects. Bartlett thought it would engender
more images and allow the subjects to shine a light on the suggestions into the text.
His conclusions were that tales were transmitted more correctly than any other
material, because we have got implicit story schemas (Mesoudi, 2007). Fiction cre-
ates possible worlds, but these worlds come from our real world (Bruner, 2002).
Indeed, the stories are written, built, but we connect them to reality and to talk
about our experience, we are based on these narrative models. When the law takes
its legitimacy from the past (case law for example), the narrative takes it into the
“possible” with the only limit the plausible. Culture shapes our expectations, but it
also takes a malicious delight in showing us the “drifts” of its own standards with its
myths and stories (Bruner, 2002). We take them into account in our lives and if they
do not correspond to the current world, we adjust it; we are “handymen/women”
(Le
´vi-Strauss, 1990, personal traduction). We will look in the stock of stories we
have to explain what happens to us. Works of fictions are decisive in acculturation
and knowledge; it is a tool that allows us to “know” our environment and to do so
we use language (Bruner, 2000). Studying it makes it possible to understand how
humans build their realities.
Stories can also have a moral purpose, especially the fable. We can find this
form of generalization explicitly written at the end of a story, or, we can deduce it
ourselves. These few words that can summarize a story are linked to the proverbs.
The narrative is sometimes related to an unfolded proverb (Rey, 2015) and often
shares most of the characteristics outlined above for the proverb (anonymity,
truth, common construction, morality, and advice). The fable and the proverb
have in common the will to establish or reinforce social and/or moral laws of
the ordinary world. However, unlike the proverb, the narrative is not concise
and thus involves a particular sequentiality (Bruner, 2015), which makes it possible
to understand a story, to feel it as real, to “live” it, and to remember it.
The proverb appears in various literary genres, but it is only very slightly
defined as such. We chose to insert the proverb as a short story in the world of
longer stories (myths and tales). Although they are different in their forms, stories
and proverbs share characteristics and that is why we decided to unite them,
because one allows us to better understand the other and vice versa. We can
affirm that the proverb is a singular utterance both in its content and in its
form. What makes the proverb unique is the interweaving of the following partic-
ular characteristics: anonymity (Amey, 2002), experience (Ghattas-Soliman, 1981),
truth (Anscombre, 1994), advice (Gergen, 1990), morality (Adam, 1999), metaphor
(Kleiber, 2010; Penfield & Duru, 1988), common construction (Amey, 2002; Rey,
2015), conciseness (Zouogbo, 2008), and astonishing stability (Penfield & Duru,
1988; Rey, 2015). Peculiar to each culture because it “carries the weight of human
experience in a condensed form” (Penfield & Duru, 1988, p. 120), the proverb is
collectively constructed, has no author, and is part of ordinary everyday knowl-
edge, in other words, our common sense (Moscovici, 2013). When we say a prov-
erb, we refer to all the people who said this proverb before us. To all appearances,
504 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

the proverb could be considered proper to the profane utterance, yet it relies on an
indisputable authority, the “ONE” which aims to “increase credibility by placing
itself above diversity” (Gre
´sillon & Maingueneau, 1984, p. 114). Amey (2002)
speaks of “one-truth”, it is a common truth, collective and recognized (Amey,
2002). The proverb is a language expression highlighting our representations on
social phenomena. Its brevity makes it a practical material for generalizing a sit-
uation, such as “a comrade that one is happy to find again” (Rey, 2015). The
proverbial wisdom would be born in the horror: “It saw the light of the day in a
society that was disproportionate in misfortune, violence with any restraint, cold
and famine. A ruthless society where absolute stability seemed the only way to
keep the people from disaster, epidemic, war, massacre, terror and death.” (Rey,
2015, personal translation). A more recent example could be related to the attacks
of 13 November 2015, the Paris motto “Fluctuat nec mergitur” resurfaced.
It symbolizes the crises, revolutions, and dangers that Paris has known, but that
this city has managed to face and overcome by force and courage. Under this
motto, Paris seems strong, able to overcome all the trials. These three words
from Latin were the subject of mass communication, climbing the Eiffel Tower,
having been “tagged” and having been the subject of many “post” on social net-
works. This motto seems to gather people together around the claim of a strong
identity facing painful events. Moreover, proverbs seem to have other social func-
tions. They can sometimes be distorted (Wosniak, 2009), a means to manipulate
(Mieder, 1982), to reduce dissonance (Stalder, 2010), or to spread rumors
(Gavillet, 2003).
The vocabulary associated with myths and proverbs sometimes demonstrates
how they are perceived. Concerning proverbs, in the 17th century, a popular upris-
ing broke out and proverbs were pointed out as the language of narrow-minded
and ridiculous people (in The Litigants of Racine, 1669), or reduced to stupid
“truisms” (in L’Oublieux of Perrault, 1691). It was not until the 19th century
that proverbs experienced a resurrection through cinema, theater, and fairy
tales. It has even been used by psychiatrists and psychologists to detect mental
illnesses such as schizophrenia (Zouogbo, 2008). Indeed, according to Gorham
(1956), a person diagnosed with schizophrenia cannot understand the metaphors
present in the proverb. At the same time, proverbs do not give out under the
weight of contradiction, the fact that something “deviates” from the rule in no
way detracts from its “truth” (Anscombre, 1994). In the use of proverbs, this
duality does not put ourselves in a difficult position. “Every cloud has a silver
lining/it never rains but it pours, one swallow does not a summer make/where there
is smoke there is fire” are examples, these proverbs are complementary, but not
contradictory. It is thus a matter particularly resistant and which makes admit the
faculty of the mind to be contradicted. If Moscovici and Markova
´(2000) speak of
cognitive polyphasia, which represents “various and often opposite modes of
thought” (p. 245), here these are opposing thoughts. Another commonality with
common sense thinking is the use of metaphor in proverbs. The proverb often uses
the metaphor and this allows it to be connected to the whole field of the symbolic
Mercier and Kalampalikis 505

discourse, thanks to the rich content of symbol (Pouilloux, Encyclopaedia
Universalis). This metaphorical virtue is part of the social utility of the proverb
because naming the unknown is a way to apprehend it, to become familiar with it.
The structure of the proverb seems to be a crucial point to grasp the cultural issues
unfolding around it. It would be enigmatic metaphors that would refer to the
characteristic ambiguous of reality (Soriano, Encyclopaedia Universalis). This
movement of the analogy between the old and the new guides us to the theory
of social representations that describe these anchoring processes allowing famil-
iarization with our social world.
The proverb has often been studied under different approaches (linguistics and
paremia), which have been fundamental to understand this object, but little study
is devoted to it as an object in social psychology. As we have seen, the inherent
characteristics of this type of sentence make them useful and practical materials.
They represent an interesting subject for the study of common sense thinking since
they constitute popular truths, because they have been socially elaborated and
because they involve a practical thought. As for the narrative, it allows us to
understand the “normal” proceedings of events and the transformation of an indi-
vidual experience into a collective one and it has been much more studied in social
psychology. We decided to study the proverb and the story for features they had in
common, especially their inclusion in the social thinking, but also because they
collected enough differences to be compared. These studies have allowed us to
integrate the proverb in the same way as the narrative as cultural material
to study transmission. The theoretical framework has highlighted the inscription
of proverbs and stories in the available knowledge content forming part of social
thought. They are objects of a cultural transmission allowing the individual to
interpret events. With the teaching of the theory of social representations, of pop-
ular and cultural psychology, we have chosen, following Bartlett’s model, to work
these materials in a form culturally foreign to the group. In our case, we especially
wanted to observe the recollection of the proverb over time, since it is transmitted
from generation to generation. Thus, we opted for the method of repeated repro-
duction. This method has been reworked and extended by many authors but with
different goals. Some of them wanted to understand if the transmission depended
on the groups that remember. It seems that age (Northway, 1936), situation
(Maxwell, 1938), or the culture in which we live (Nadel, 1937) change the way
we remember. Gauld and Stephenson (1967) wondered which was the instructions
that Bartlett had proposed during these experiments. Gradually, following
Bartlett’s warnings about the opposition between the cognition and the social,
several research studies are emerging with more mixed approaches. It is with
this in mind that Wagoner and Gillespie (2014) opted for a cognitive, social,
and cultural approach, nourished by studies conducted until then, to refine and
extend the method and the analysis. They decided to carry out the experiment with
dyads, just as Bergman and Roediger (1999). According to Wagoner and Gillespie
(2014), be in pairs to “remember” facilitates natural conversation and gives an
overview of the “black box” between input and output. Following the warnings of
506 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

Edwards and Potter (1992) about the inadequacy of an analysis based only on a
correct or incorrect recall classification, they decided to analyze data through
sociocultural mediators (which we will define later).
So, this article has three main objectives. The first one is to replicate, for the first
time in French, an original experiment of F.C. Bartlett (1920, 1932/1997) with the
same narrative he used: “The War of the Ghosts” and to compare our results with
Wagoner and Gillespie’s (2014). The second objective is to propose to study prov-
erbs from a psychosocial point of view by using the method of repeated reproduc-
tion. Even if the proverb and the story are similar in their characteristics, they
differ in their lengths and when one uses more the implicit, the other uses more
the metaphor. Thereby, the third objective is the comparison between memory
processes for the proverb and the story.
Methodology
We chose to support and compare our results (only for the narrative) with
Wagoner and Gillespie’s study for the qualitative analysis of interactions
between participants. Thereby, intermediate instructions, dyads based on a pre-
existing friendship, profile of our population (students between 18 and 32 years
old), as well as the methods of analysis were based on Wagoner and Gillespie’s
study (2014).
Materials
The story. Originally used by Bartlett (1920, 1932/1997), the tale “The War of the
Ghosts” allowed us to study narratives. Thereby, we translated this tale into
French (cf. appendix). This is the first material we used.
The proverb. To preserve the unfamiliarity of the material (Bartlett, 1932/1997), the
chosen proverb came from a different culture, in this case from Ivory Coast:
“If you do not accept that the sun hits your back, the moon will not hit your
stomach”. It was ambiguous enough since it could be understood in many ways,
but the underlying meaning was: if we cannot agree to experience an unpleasant
moment (sun on the back), we will not be able to reach a state of well-being and
satisfaction (moon on the stomach).
Participants
Eighteen student dyads
3
(22 women, 14 men, average age 22 years) in three major
French cities who already knew each other volunteered to participate. We asked
people who were at the library and surrounding area if they volunteered to par-
ticipate. The study was presented to them as an experiment which started with a
45-minute session on reading and games followed by a second 30-minute meeting
one week later.
Mercier and Kalampalikis 507

Proceedings
All participants had to come to both sessions. All instructions were both oral and
written, and all responses were written (by hand) by the participants. The study
consisted of eight stages: six were conducted during the first week and two in the
second week (see Table 1). The first three stages were interchanged with the three
following stages in order to neutralize any order effect. The 18 dyads had to
read the story “The War of the Ghosts” and the proverb “If you do not accept
that the sun hits your back, the moon will not hit your stomach”. Nevertheless,
since the sounds of the proverb appear to be central to it, 10 dyads have read it
silently (part 1), as for the story, and eight dyads have read it silently and then
aloud (part 2).
Table 1. The eight stages of the procedure.
Week Stage Title of the task Content—instructions
First
week
1 Reading the proverb Double reading of the proverb for a part of the
dyads (part 1) at a normal reading rate. For the
other part, after reading the proverb, one of
participants had to pronounce it aloud and the
dyad partner listened twice (phase 2). This step
was individual when it came to reading, but
collective (with a partner) when it came to
listening/pronouncing (only for part 2).
2 The socio-demographic
form
A socio-demographic form was proposed indi-
vidually to the subjects as a distraction task.
3 Reproduction of
the proverb
Participants had to discuss and write together the
proverb as they remembered it.
4 Reading the narrative
“The war of
the Ghosts”
Reading the tale twice individually at a normal
reading rate
5 Distraction task—game
(time’s up)a
15-minute playful game to avoid recency and
primacy effects.
6 Reproduction of the
narrative “The war of
the Ghosts”
Participants had to discuss and write collectively
the narrative as they remembered it.
Second
week
7 Reproduction of
the proverb
New reproduction of the proverb by the same
participants (identical to task 3)
8 Reproduction of
the narrative
New reproduction of the narrative by the same
participants (identical to task 3)
a
We chose to integrate a game as a distraction task (Time’s up). This game had rules that were not adapted to
the situation, so they were modified. The choice to use a game rather than simple mathematical exercises is
justified by several points. A game had the benefit of being more fun for the participants, it had the advantage
of breaking the stressful aspect of the experiment and since it was a speed game, participant’s concentration
was intense and the task proved to be very distracting.
508 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

Data collection
We took into account both the written and oral productions (stages 3, 6, 7, and 8).
Following the indications of Mandler and Johnson (1977), Bergman and Roediger
(1999), and Wagoner and Gillespie (2014), in their own replication of Bartlett’s
experiment, we divided the translated story into 42 proposals (or units of ideas),
which perfectly matches with the English version. The proverb was also divided
into two proposals. Each of these was treated as either “accurate” or “distorted”
(see Wagoner & Gillespie, 2014). Oral productions were faithfully transposed and
it is on this basis that we looked for the sociocultural mediators.
Data analysis
Written production coding. As we said, the entire of story propositions was set in
relation to the material written by the participants. For a given proposition, it was
coded as “forgotten”, “accurate”, or “distorted” (see Bergman & Roediger, 1999.
The “distorted” proposals were separated into two types: minor distortion
(changes in the surface structure of the propositions, reformulation which gener-
ates a noticeable change, but while remaining correct) and major distortion
(change in the meaning of the sentence). These major distortions are achieved
either by normalization (something is replaced by another) or by inference
(added information not provided in the story) or by import (a new element appears
without a direct link or with unknown origin). Making a distinction between dif-
ferent distortions allows us to get into position on the change of meaning. This
method makes it possible to compare the data between the previous studies and to
have a first idea of the reproduced material, but as Edwards and Potter (1992) have
pointed out, an analysis exclusively based on this classification is not sufficient. It is
on this point that a qualitative analysis of material via sociocultural mediators
takes on its full meaning.
Oral production coding. Wagoner and Gillespie (2014) highlighted several mediators
4
in order to understanding memories “in the making”, and this is why we chose to
take this study as an element of comparison. “Imagery” refers to expressions that
characterize the pictorial aspect of memory (e.g. “I have it on the tip of the
tongue”). “Narrative coherence” is the moment when participants consider that
something “must” have been said in the text. “Deduction”, which has similarities
with narrative coherence, is based more on common sense and logic and less on the
coherence of the emerging text. “Repetition” is a word or utterance that comes
back twice or more, it shows a key point in the reasoning of those who remember.
“Rhythmic gesture” is a mediator that must be taken into account and observed,
although it is difficult to note the frequencies. The sixth indicator is “questioning”,
questions can be directed at the other or self. They will be taken into account as a
result of dialogic thought and as a means of remembering (Wagoner & Gillespie,
2014). The last indicator is the “deferring to the other”. These are the concessions
made in the relationship between two people to determine which memories of
Mercier and Kalampalikis 509

which person they will rely on in case of “memory dispute” (Wagoner & Gillespie,
2014). By using transcripts of participants’ speeches, they were counted up.
Results
Written productions
The story. In Tables 2 and 3, we note that in both replications (Wagoner &
Gillespie’s one in 2014, and ours in 2017), the mean proportion of proposition
“accurate”, of proposition “distorted”, and the proportion of errors follow the
same trend and have similar values. Between the two recalls, the percentage of
“accurate” proposition decreases (–5% in 2014 and –8% in 2017), the percentage
of errors increase symmetrically (þ7% in 2014 and þ10% in 2017), and the per-
centage of “accurate” propositions is lower than “distorted” proposals. The per-
centage of distorted propositions is lower than that of errors, which means that in
both studies, a large number of propositions were omitted. Concerning the pro-
portion of errors, we notice that in 2014, the final material produced had more
omissions, but fewer deformations. However, in 2017, the final material proposed
by participants presented both more forgetfulness and distortions. During the
second recall session, the rate of “correct” proposals dropped again (–8%), where-
as “distorted” proposals increased again (þ8%). The proportion of errors
increased by 10%, which means that there are fewer proposals recalled, whether
correctly or not. This reflects a loss of material, the subjects do not remember as
many proposals as they did during the first recall, and those which they remember
are more transformed.
Story–proverb comparison. Even though the proverb and the story share character-
istics, they are different enough that we supposed distinct processes of remem-
brance. Figure 1 (see below) schematizes the temporal evolution of the
proportion of error. It shows differences and similarities between proverbs
(phase 1 and 2) and the narrative.
Unlike the narrative, no proverb proposals are forgotten, most probably
because it is shorter (n¼2) and consequently that is easier to remember that it
Table 2. Data collection.
Written production coding :
1) Correct/distorted (Wagoner & Gillespie, 2014)
2) Minor/major (Bergman & Roediger, 1999)
Oral production coding via
socio-cultural mediators
(Wagoner & Gillespie, 2014)
510 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

contains two propositions. After one week (second recall), the proportion of errors
increased. On the final material produced by the participants, for the story, there
was 77% of “distorted” propositions, for the proverb which was read silently, there
was 65% of “distorted” propositions, and for the proverb which was read aloud,
the final material contains until 81% of “distorted” propositions. When the prov-
erb was read aloud, it seems to follow the same temporal evolution of the story,
which means that both of them were quantitatively the most transformed materials
over time. Nevertheless, it is when participants were read the proverb silently that
Table 3. Comparison of our results of the story remembering with Wagoner and Gillespie’s
(2014) ones.
Wagoner and
Gillespie (2014) Current
Wagoner and
Gillespie (2014) Current
First recall
(15 min)
replication
(2017)
Second recall
(1 week)
replication
(2017)
Mean proportion of
accurate proposition
a
15% 20% 10% 12%
Mean proportion of
distorted proposition
b
41% 41% 41% 49%
Mean proportion of errors
c
75% 67% 82% 77%
a
“Mean proportion of accurate proposition” is the percentage of accurate propositions out the total number of
propositions in which the story was divided (i.e. 42).
b
“Mean proportion of distorted proposition” is the percentage of distorted propositions out the total number of
propositions in which the story was divided (i.e. 42).
c
“Mean proportion of errors” is the percentage of distorted propositions, but not including forgotten propo-
sitions. On the final material produced by the participants, if 20 propositions have been recalled, the pro-
portion of error is the number of distorted proposition on these 20, and not on the 42 propositions of the
story. We discuss of a proportion of errors and not “mistakes” as such.
67%
77%
30%
65%
68%
81%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Second recallFirst recall
Mean proportion of errors (%)
Story Proverb (phase 1) Proverb (phase 2)
Figure 1. Mean proportion of errors for narrative and proverb (phase 1 and 2).
Note: Part 1: proverb read silently/Part 2: proverb read aloud.
Mercier and Kalampalikis 511

the fastest transformation appears between the first and the second session
(þ35%). But what about the type of deformations?
Table 4 shows the distribution of the two types of distortion in the participants
written reproduction. We note that the distribution of the distortion for the narrative
changes only for minor distortion (reformulation, for example, “They hear screams,
maybe of war”
5
) from the first to the second recall session. For the narrative, there is a
significant difference between the number of minor and major distortions that is to say
that for both sessions, the story is mainly transformed by rewording and not by
change of meaning.
6
For the proverb in part 1, even if the minor distortions vary
little, the number of major distortion increases by 30%. This means that the recollec-
tion of the proverb occurs in the participants’ memory with a different meaning.
Finally, for the proverb in part 2, the minor distortion is stable. However, the
major distortion increased by 13%. The meaning of the proverb which has been
read silently is changing faster (þ30%) from one session to another than the proverb
which has been pronounced (þ13%).
What we can first conclude is that the narrative and the proverb when it was pro-
nounced are more transformed than the proverb read silently. In light of the type of
deformations, we notice that for the narrative, it is mainly reformulation (minor),
whereas for the proverb (part 1 and 2) it is especially change of meaning (major).
Oral productions
The story. Figure 2 shows, according to the first and second recall and for each socio-
cultural mediators, the total number of occurrences in the story reconstruction.
Questions, narrative coherence, and deduction decrease between the first and the
second recall, certainly because the frame of the story and its meaning have already
been thought. Imagery and reference to the other remain quite stable between the two
sessions. Finally, we note that repetitions and gestures increase between both sessions.
We can venture the hypothesis that the gesture, and especially the imitation, could
Table 4. Types of deformation of materials.
First recall Second recall
Minor distortion
Story 56% 65%
Proverb (part 1) 20% 25%
Proverb (part 2) 31% 31%
Major distortion
Story 10% 11%
Proverb (part 1) 10% 40%
Proverb (part 2) 37% 50%
Note: The values shown in this table represent the average percentage of
propositions which have new minor or major transformations on the total
number of proposition recalled by the participants, without taking into account
the forgotten proposals.
512 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

reveal the incorporation of the text a week later. Concerning the repetition, partic-
ipants were repeating more sentences to see if it looked like their first reproduction.
However, to understand the role that these mediators play in discourse and in memory
reconstruction in greater detail, it is necessary to use retranscription of participants’
written and oral output and to perform a qualitative analysis of this data. As Wagoner
and Gillespie (2014), and in order to put the speech of the participants in context, we
propose extracts highlighting some socio-cultural mediators.
Excerpt—From the first reproduction. In the following excerpt, the participants try to
find proposals No. 15, 16, and 17 by using several mediators: Deferring to the
other’s proposal, questioning, gesture, and imitation.
Original:
“I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not know where I have gone.”
Written reproduction:
One of the two children renounces.
Participants’ speech:
Interviewed 2 (Ied 2): he tells him “there are some in the canoe”, or one of the men,
I don’t know, who? And the other, he says he has to go home to see his mother
Interviewed 1 (Ied 1): His family
Ied 2: ehm... his family
Ied 1: No no no no! In fact, he says “I have people who count on me”, you see? Basically,
in fact, that’s it, you see?
Ied 2: (laughs), but we do not know that!
Ied 1: no, but he says something like “I can’t fight, I have a family (imitation)”, you see,
it is in this sense that he says
Ied 2: ah yeah?
Ied 1: ah if I was devastated (laughs)
Ied 2: ah maybe yeah
When it came to understanding why the character of the young man in the story
did not go to war, a deductive element emerged, and frequently the story took on a
584
406
131 198 326
168 47
498 428
132 196 260 149 69
0
200
400
600
800
Questioning Repetition Defering to
the other
Imagery Narrative
Coherence
Deduction Gesturing
Occurrence of sociocultural mediators according to the
two recall sessions
First reproduction Second reproduction
Figure 2. Sociocultural mediators and their occurrences in the story reconstruction.
Mercier and Kalampalikis 513

more dramatic tone. Thus, some participants concluded that this young man has
people “who count” on him, unlike his friend who seems to have no family, accord-
ing to participants. Other conclusions emerged as to the personality of the young
man who does not go to war (often called “coward”), he “grasses on his pal”by
saying “you can die (laughs)”. The participants used another mediator 116 times in
all: the imitation of the characters in the text, as if it were a movie voiceover.
Participants took on the voice of someone else, they embodied the story, and
words came alive. This often gave the impression that they themselves had lived
this story by proxy. This imitation often went hand in hand with a specific gesture.
7
Some mediators, absent from the proposed extract, allowed the participants to
reconstruct the story. For example, a large number of participants decided to recall
the story in its totality before writing it. They first sought the structure, the
sequence of events, then, in writing, looked for details. In these moments of dis-
course, narrative coherence and deduction appeared, although there is prevalence
of narrative coherence on deduction, “what they must have meant” was more
often discussed.
In the second session, these two mediators (deduction and imitation) appeared
to be lower in number than in the first reproduction, certainly because the structure
of the story had already been thought upon and established. Frequently, partic-
ipants agreed that the text explained that the Indian is touched and then they
cogitated, in the light of the images they had in their heads. It is only by putting
into words what participants imagined that they bring new elements. These images
were very useful for understanding and recalling the text. But it must be said that
images, come from elsewhere, often “interfered” with the memory of the text and
were difficult to superimpose with the emerging text.
The proverb. Figure 3 shows, according to the first and second recall and for each
sociocultural mediators, the total number of occurrences in the proverb reconstruc-
tion (part 1 and 2). It should be noted again that this figure compares the results of
10 dyads (part 1) with the results of eight dyads (part 2). Occurrences of sociocul-
tural mediators in their current form should not be compared. Nevertheless, unex-
pectedly, we notice that all sociocultural mediators are present in a greater quantity
in part 2 even if fewer dyads are included (n¼8). In addition, it is interesting to note
that for the proverb of the part 1, all the sociocultural mediators decrease during the
second session and that is the opposite for the study 2, they increase. We will try to
understand the reasons in the discussion, but this figure shows already that pronun-
ciation of the proverb changes its memory reconstruction.
Excerpt—From the first reproduction. In the following excerpt, the participants try to
find proverb proposals by using imagery
Original:
“If you do not accept that the sun hits your back”
Written reproduction:
514 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

If you do not want the sun go through your stomach
Participants’ speech:
Interviewed 1 (Ied 1): Slice? Go through? At least, there was something of the aggres-
sion registry, I think ...
Interviewed 2 (Ied2): Hum, yes, it wasn’t nice, I agree, but I don’t know what it was...
Ied 1: If you “thing” your stomach, then do not turn your back to the moon or something
like that
Ied 2: (laughs) yeah it was something like that
Ied 1: in any case ...
Ied 2: there was the back and the moon, that’s it
Ied 1: in any case the guy was going west ...
Participants attempted to retrieve the proverb by finding the hidden meaning of the
sentence. In discussions, images that participants had in mind were not necessarily
shared, and sometimes they bumped into each other. In the excerpt above, we find
a vocabulary expressing a certain violence but also an allusion to a direction. This
impression of direction is certainly related to the opposition in the sentence
between sun and moon. For most dyads in both studies, the “violent” aspect of
the verb hitting in the proverb was disconcerting and seemed to cause immediate
misunderstanding. “Hitting” is hard to understand as something which brings a
benefit or something positive.
The proverb seems to have been fragmented in the participants’ minds and
gathering words and propositions as a puzzle is too costly. Logic is very important
since it allows later referral to an element. Nevertheless, something which differ-
entiates the two phases on the proverb is repetition. As the participants repeated
the proposal, they expected the puzzle to be reconstructed, in other words that
sentences and meanings suddenly appeared. Repetition seems to lead to a
24
53
50
41
28
45
38
33
11
14
18
4
16
32
28
19
18
30
25
36
9
23
26
16
9
12 10
13
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Part 1 (read silently) Part 2 (read aloud) Part 1 (read silently) Part 2 (read aloud)
Second reproductionFirst reproduction
Occurence of sociocultural mediators according to the two
recall sessions and studies
Questioning
Repetition
Defering
Imagery
Narrative Coherence
Deduction
Gesturing
Figure 3. Sociocultural mediators and their occurrences in proverb reconstruction (part 1
and 2).
Mercier and Kalampalikis 515

reduction of uncertainty. The high number of repetitions is certainly related to the
fact that the proverb had already been read aloud and that participants were trying
to recall the sound of the spoken words. Regarding gestures, it seems to be a good
indicator, but since it is difficult to identify them in the audio data and to find all of
them by observation, it represents an incomplete window on the psychological
processes in progress. Nevertheless, in the corpus, different gestures have
showed different intentions. For example, when a new idea was uttered and one
of the participants did not remember it, he was stepping back and frowns, or just
laughs. In a different way, to persuade the other that what he remembers is correct,
many movements of the hands have been raised (pointing the sheet with the finger,
make the big eyes as when a memory comes back, ...). Although it is not a gesture
strictly speaking, laughter is particularly present in the discussion between the
dyads and permit to accept the misunderstanding of the meaning of the proverb.
Discussion
Analysis of socio-cultural mediators provides a great deal of information about
memory reconstruction in dyads. The subjects organized their memories around
what they believed had been said, according to narrative models (narrative coher-
ence) and reacted to their own statements in the same way as they react to each
other’s utterances (schema). It was very common to observe a persistence in the
story shape, here as the reminiscence of the general framework of the story before
remembering the details. There was a willingness to accept and become familiar
with the story content and its writing style by making connections with elements
outside the story. Nevertheless, this symbolic thought has not been mobilized all
the time, and sometimes the stigmatic thought (Kalampalikis & Haas, 2008) has
taken over. Sometimes, in the participants’ conversations, the desire to maintain a
certain amount of strangeness was expressed. After deducing that the story and the
proverb did not come from the same culture as them, the participants became
familiar with the idea that this story and proverb would not become familiar to
them. So, sometimes, when things appeared to be too complicated, they tried to
rewrite the text as it was originally written without seeking meanings.
Having made the story alive through imitation led the participants to laugh, and
as Bartlett wrote (1932/1997, p. 89), comic situations make it easier to remember
the story, as long as there is laughter. The socio-cultural aspect is represented by
transformation of the narrative language into the group’s own oral language,
8
and
also as the way of living history with cinematographic references
9
seems to be
peculiar to a culture anchored in the seventh art. This anchoring, in its dynamic
vision (Kalampalikis & Haas, 2008), allows the story to be incorporated into the
networks of knowledge already present for the group and in this reciprocal rela-
tionship of the known to the unknown. An important aspect is the time elapsed
between the current replica and the originals. For over a century now, science
fiction in artistic productions (cinema, literature, and comics) has developed con-
siderably. The presence of ghosts in these productions has certainly made them
516 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

more familiar, and explanations such as “it does not suffer because it is a ghost”
seem less strange and sufficient to understand why the character has continued to
live after being shot. This new “narrative model” (Wertsch, 2002), according to
which the protagonist is a ghost, organizes these elements and makes the story
more coherent. Through the anchoring of novelty (i.e. this strange story) within
more familiar knowledge, and through the reverse motion (i.e. familiar knowledge
in novelty), participants could adapt the story to something closer and more under-
standable to their social group. This analogy will not be insignificant and without
effect, the old and the new will be impacted by this new relationship.
We find other results similar to those of Bartlett (1932/1997, p. 79) such as the
creation of a “sympathetic weather”: participants’ memories were organized
around a pattern related to time.
10
The “persistent tendencies” seemed to have
influenced memory reconstruction memory to make it more conventional and in
keeping with the representations of the participants. Three senses of movements
are mixed up, namely, sunrise/sunset, getting up/falling down, and getting up/
going to bed. In this way, participants fight against what they have in mind because
some elements collide with their cultural expectations and they only remember a
“broad metaphor of orientation” (Wagoner & Gillespie, 2014, p. 13). The most
frequent omissions identified by Bartlett (1932/1997, p. 81) are very similar to ours,
namely, title, proper names, and specific numbers. Although most of the time there
was an insistent look at what has been recalled in the written reproduction, cor-
rectly or distorted, the forgotten proposals were of great interest. A large number
of proposals “disappeared”, on an average, 40% of the proposals were missing
from both written reproductions. Some of the “forgotten” proposals create inter-
ference with the recalled proposals and sow seeds of doubt in the participants’
minds. Count propositions omission on written reproductions would not be
enough to conclude that there is a real forgetfulness, if it is not written, it does
not mean that it is not thought or discussed: “The communication of a message
does not coincide exactly—or only—with its linguistic expression” (Kalampalikis
& Moscovici, 2005, p. 16). The most forgotten proposals are located at two stra-
tegic points in the text: at the beginning
11
and at the end.
12
In “The War of the
Ghosts”, weather is described as foggy and calm, which is one of the most fre-
quently “forgotten” proposition. The association between weather and mood
create an interference with participants’ expectations. The representation of weath-
er during a tragedy is often stormy, but in “The War of the Ghosts”, time is
described as foggy and calm. We note that some of the proposals which are missing
from written reproduction are not necessarily forgotten by participants. It even
seems that some of them cause the distortion of recalled proposals. The partic-
ipants seem to turn around something they feel, see, or understand without being
able to name these images and distort a proposition in order to integrate this
feeling. It was during the discussion that participants very clearly expressed this
“impression”,
13
these images that they had, without knowing why they were man-
ifesting here and now. These images that the participants had, which were partic-
ularly persistent, refer to the “aesthetic and creative character of representations”
Mercier and Kalampalikis 517

(Jodelet, 2015, p. 90), and this underlines the importance of the imaged aspect of
common sense thinking. Here, “persistent tendencies” (Bartlett, 1932/1997) have
influenced the memory reconstruction to make it more conventional and consistent
with representations. These two proposals highlight the need to inscribe the
memory in a specific framework (Halbwachs, 1925/1994, 1950/1997). As
Moscovici (2012) explained, our culture is a house, a domus in which we feel
comfortable and it “operates in our affectivity, our memories, our thoughts and
our actions” (p. 69). Thus, it is not surprising that the results of Wagoner and
Gillespie (2014) and ours are similar, since the English and French words indicate
the same directions, and all leads to a difficulty of understanding. Knowing that
the image precedes the conceptualization (Jodelet, 2015), without these references,
everything seems to be confused in the minds of the participants.
The imitation of characters, associated with laughter, is very present. Imitation
corresponds to that particular form of expression which participants used to make
the story come alive. The participants dramatized and staged the story by making
the characters or the story speak. By embodying the story and its characters, the
participants bring their own knowledge. Making a linguistic transformation on
what was written certainly allowed the participants to appropriate the content by
making it “theirs”, thereby reducing unfamiliarity. By appropriation, we mean that
the participants seem to have lived the story by proxy through the characters.
Although the experience can be lived, it can also be shared by others. Human
beings have the ability to read minds (Bruner, 2000, 2002) and have intersubjec-
tivity to capture the emotional states of others. Nevertheless, it is only in the
conversion of experience into a narrative that experience can be passed on in an
understandable way to others (Bruner, 2002). Reading others’ minds no longer
depends on this capacity for intersubjectivity, but on the existence of a common
ground, of a common sense (Moscovici, 2013). It is certainly through this process
that participants appropriated the emotions and states of mind of the protagonists
of the present story.
We tried to approach the proverb from a psychosocial point of view, especially
in studying its memory reconstruction when it was foreign to a group. To do so, we
studied it parallel to the story, which allowed us to have an element of comparison.
In the long story “The War of the Ghosts”, deduction led the participants to
further “deform” or even invent propositions. Conversely, for the proverb, deduc-
tion led to a more faithful reconstruction. The dyads who deformed the proverb
least are those who looked for the meaning of the proverb and the metaphors of
which it is made up. When the images that a metaphor inspired are aligned with
those of a specific culture, as knowledge content, it makes it possible to better
remember abstract things. When this is not the case, it causes difficulties of com-
prehension and therefore retention. It is certainly for this reason that the partic-
ipants took longer to find a proverb proposal than to find a proposal for the story.
In the story, there are more elements which can be connected in order to grasp the
meaning. As Bruner (1990) explained concerning children: “Logical propositions
are most easily comprehended by the child when they are imbedded in an ongoing
518 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

story” (p. 80). Some dyads managed to correctly reconstruct the proverb when
they anchored the culturally distant metaphor to one culturally closer to them-
selves. There are therefore several stages in the reconstruction. Participants who
did not seek the meaning of the metaphor made major deformations
14
(change of
meaning). Those who did seek the meaning of the metaphor made minor defor-
mations
15
(reformulations), and finally those who sought to link the metaphor to
another, more well-known metaphor reproduced the proverb “correctly”.
16
So, the
metaphor seems to be a mode to better remember, if one manages to anchor it in a
territory of known meanings. The main problem in the proverb reconstruction is
the metaphor. If the metaphor is not understood, morality cannot be either, and
the proverb is thus an enigma, even though the characteristic of the proverb is the
quick comprehension. The metaphor must be contextualized much more than
conceptualized, otherwise, all the riches of the metaphor is left behind. To under-
stand the results, we need to fit into a developmental-global conception of meta-
phor (Christensen & Wagoner, 2015; Cornejo, 2007; Cornejo, Olivares, & Rojas,
2013). Cornejo (2007) explains that metaphor insinuates more than it literally
explains. Here, it is taken in its context of use, its meaning is changing and it
has a very important role in the development of the explanation of the real.
This is something more related to the perception that a concept. One possible
example is that of a “galloping cancer”, it is not a conceptual interaction between
the field of horse riding and the field of the disease, but the perception of the bodily
experience of something uncontrollable (Werner, 1927/1978, quoted by
Christensen & Wagoner, 2015). When the metaphorical elements of the proverb
were read (sun/hit/back; moon/not/hit/stomach), participants had to imagine what
that meant. More to fill the gaps of the unknown, imagination is an expensive
process in which the experience of a person is interrupted by something that is far
from here and now (Zittoun & Gillespie, 2015). We can imagine that the metaphor
has the power to take us toward to frames of space and time, as Halbwachs (1925/
1994) understands, and that once “inside” we find a universe of meaning. “From
this perspective, imagination creates a new or developed meaning when returning
to the concrete situation in which it occurs” (Christensen & Wagoner, 2015,
p. 518). But in the event that once it has returned from the timeless journey, the
metaphor does not inspire an already known image, and we will still try to put it in
the known. And it was here that we thought that a failure of meaning would occur.
It is not so much the metaphor that allows the understanding (and the retention) of
the proverb, but it is the fact that the presented metaphor is in agreement with our
culture and its images. Social representations serve as interpretive filters, so par-
ticipants seek a different meaning than the one presented. The second proposition
of the proverb infringes cultural expectations, abrupt representations, and ques-
tions schema. And that is what Bartlett (1932/1997) explains when he admits that
every person is not trapped and dominated by the schema. Indeed, in this case, we
cannot consider culture as a fixed “heritage” (Moscovici, 2012, p. 13) that governs
individual identities. “Knowing how individuals develop, resist or dominate their
culture is something that justifies a line of genetic investigation” (Moscovici, 2012,
Mercier and Kalampalikis 519

p. 73; personal translation). Through these words, the links with Bartlett’s studies
seem particularly evident. When Bartlett chose to use material culturally foreign
from the group, it was not only to understand how Anglo-Saxon culture would
transform material into something more familiar, but to open windows on the
genesis of culture and to study its dynamic through its transformation and its
appropriation. Since the meaning of the proverb was not sought during the first
reproduction, and since a week elapsed between the two sessions, the increase of
the number of errors in the second reproduction might come from a recollection,
perhaps too distant and non intractable. Although there is no superiority of the
one over the other, the most successful proverb reproductions are those where the
deduction is present, only the dyads who have not sought the meaning have made
major deformations. But this result seems strange, since in the face of an unfamil-
iar material, if we liken it to something we already know, to the schemas already
present (Bartlett,1932/1997), we should make more modifications. Even though
there are more distortion and more deduction in the second proverb reproduction,
it does not seem possible to understand this result as if the deformation was a
function of deduction. This is an interesting comparison between the long story
and the short story. In the long story, the deduction led the participants to further
distort or even invent the proposals. Conversely, concerning the proverb, the
deduction resulted in a reconstruction more faithful to the original proverb.
Nevertheless, when the proverb is pronounced orally, the search for meaning is
secondary and is often overwhelmed by narrative coherence. We assume that in
search of a sound similar to the pronounced proverb, the participants repeated the
proverb on a loop until it “sounds good”. The proverb is short, so it is easier to
memorize than a longer material. Goody wrote in 1977 that intentional repetition
“(...) is a way to focus its attention by eliminating other information, this is why
we often close our eyes and plug our ears” (p. 38). Nevertheless, this is not quite
what we observe, the participants were in pairs and this repetition was addressed as
much to oneself as to the other, seeking to provoke a reaction. Bartlett (1932/1997)
explained that when we remember, we seek to reproduce the story as it was written.
These results are found largely in the proverb of part 2 (read aloud), whereas for
the proverb of part 1 (read silently), these results are only partially highlighted.
This is certainly why the oral proverb and the narrative vary in parallel, as we
indicated in the results. Nevertheless, in the story, the participants cut themselves
off, laughed, had a lot of gestures, while for the proverb read aloud, the discussions
were rather split with a specific speaking time and they were talking in unison. The
construction of the Baoule
´proverb is familiar to us, but its meaning, induced by
the metaphors, is not grasped. Thus, by pronouncing the proverb, participants
seem to have focused on the importance of the form and caused a distancing of
the meaning. This could be one of the reasons why it is less well remembered than
the proverb which was only read silently. We thought that saying the proverb
verbally would permit to better remember it, but if that allowed to less deform
it through time, the first recall have anchored a much more transformed memory
than when it was simply read silently. Conversations that emerge in the proverb
520 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

reproduction were particularly repetitive. We could analyze these repetitions as an
irrepressible need to assign meaning to an event or an object. At first sight, con-
versations seemed to have been made of simple repetitions juxtaposed to each
other, but this repetition cannot be there without having a specific meaning. We
could suppose that this redundancy “expresses the collective, the social bond”
(Kalampalikis & Moscovici, 2005, p. 24) and that it could allow by using “common
lexical repertoires, accepted and socially elaborated formulas” (Kalampalikis &
Moscovici, 2005, p. 22) that its form and sound become more familiar.
This work includes the collection and analysis of 18 dyads (32 people) on two
meetings spaced in time. It includes the reproduction of Bartlett’s study and
methodology, with major support by the study by Wagoner and Gillespie
(2014). Thus, since never reproduced in France, a work was intended for the
translation of the protocol and materials. Our results seem to allow a validation
of the story in a French language. Another part of this study focused on the
proverb. We wanted to observe how the memories evolved according to whether
the proverb was just read silently or if it was read aloud. Since the proverb is a
material that plays on the sounds, we made the hypothesis that it would be better
retained if it had been read aloud. This hypothesis has not been validated, and even
the opposite may happen. Through this study, we tried to show that the story and
the proverb were culturally inscribed and that it was difficult to understand them if
they came from a culture different from ours. Matter is lost, added, and invented
over time by processes of conventionalization, anchoring, and the influence of
social surroundings. We can also conclude that the proverb, through this deeply
social and cultural characteristics, is an interesting object, even an occasion, to
understand how we reach to socially represent things. This collective reconstruc-
tion of memory is done using strategies including the use of sociocultural media-
tors. More generally, repeated reproduction seems to be relevant for studying
cultural transmission over time or social sharing of materials. Our results suggest
that proverbs from another culture are more transformed over time, while orally
remembering them stabilizes this transformation. It helps us to understand the
processes implemented in order to represent, and remember what surrounds us,
and the means used to do so. In art, science, or in the media, it is a vision of reality
that is offered to us, shaped and sometimes staged, these common and cultural
materials also form an important part of our social world (Moscovici, 2012).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.
Mercier and Kalampalikis 521

ORCID iD
Nikos Kalampalikis https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5373-1355
Notes
1. This active role could be exemplified through nomination. A group can show its desire
for a cultural representational change by giving a new name to something (see
Philoge
`ne, 2001).
2. He also used “The son who tried to outfit his father” (Roediger III, Bergman, &
Meade, 2003).
3. Scientific areas: social sciences (44.4%), science and technology, sports (16.6%), law,
administration, political science (16.6%), arts, communication, culture (11.1%), man-
agement, economy (5.5%), and health care (5.5%).
4. Imagery, narrative coherence, deduction, repetition, question, rhythmic gesture, and
deferring to the other.
5. See proposal no. 3, appendix.
6. When the distortions were major (7%), in 32% of cases, this due of a normalization (e.g.
“they are hiding in nature”) and of an inference in 41% of cases (e.g. “Arrived at the village,
the hostilities are launched, the inhabitants are all around, the fights surround the group”).
7. “Then there’s the canoe coming in and they say oh it’s warriors (imitation)”, for exam-
ple, in this excerpt, the participant does not only take a voice different from their own,
but opens their eyes wide, turning their head to imitate the surprise presumed to be
experienced by the two young men of history.
8. “yeah ! and you can snuff it, you don’t have a family!”
9. “Interviewed 1: I don’t remember ... oh, wait! I’ve got something like ... blood ... were
killed ... there was a lot of stuff ... no, but wait, I think that I combine with films with
women and children ... / Interviewed 2: no no no it’s not Game of Thrones”.
10. The two most distorted proposals in the first and second reproductions are the ones that
open and close the story temporally. 1 explains that it is night, 38 is based on the rising
sun. We can assume that night and day are associated with particular events. The night
would be tragedy or drama and the day a happy end, but in this tale, the oppo-
site happens.
11. One night, two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals.
12. When the sun rose, he fell down.
13. “I have a sense of direction... to the west”
14. If you do not want the sun to stab your stomach, then do not turn your back on the
moon. Example of major distortion by inference (from study 2).
15. If you do not want the sun hits your back, the moon will not hit you. Example of minor
distortion (from study 2).
16. If you do not accept that the sun hits your back, the moon will not hit your stomach.
Example of a proverb “correctly” recalled (from study 1).
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Author Biographies
Pauline Mercier is a PhD student at the University of Lyon 2, lab GRePS (EA 4163
(France) preparing her thesis on the work of F.C. Bartlett in social and cultur-
al psychology.
Mercier and Kalampalikis 525

Nikos Kalampalikis is full professor of Social Psychology at the University Lumie
`re
Lyon 2 (France) and member of the lab GRePS (EA 4163). His actual work on
social representations deals with symbolic practices of kinship and gift. He edited
two books with Serge Moscovici (Reason and Cultures, 2012; The Scandal of Social
Thought, 2013), both in the Editions of the Ecole des hautes e
´tudes en sciences
sociales, Paris. More recently, he edited two other books, Serge Moscovici: un
regard sur les mondes communs, 2019. Paris, E
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de l’homme and Serge Moscovici: Psychologie des repre
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Appendix 1
“The War of the Ghosts”French translation and division in 42 proposals
1. Une nuit, deux jeunes hommes originaires d’Egulac descendirent a
`la rivie
`re
pour chasser le phoque
2. Une fois sur place, le temps devint brumeux et calme.
3. Ils entendirent alors des cris de guerre
4. et pense
`rent: “Ce doit eˆ tre une expe
´dition guerrie
`re”.
5. Ils regagne
`rent le rivage
6. et se cache
`rent derrie
`re une souche.
7. Des cano€
es arrive
`rent.
8. Ils entendirent le bruit des pagaies
9. et virent l’un des cano€
es remonter a
`leur niveau.
10. Il y avait cinq hommes a
`l’inte
´rieur
11. qui leur dirent: “Nous aimerions vous emmener. Qu’en dites-vous?
12. Nous remontons la rivie
`re pour faire la guerre au peuple”.
13. L’un des jeunes hommes dit: “Je n’ai pas de fle
`che”.
14. “Les fle
`ches sont dans le cano€
e”, re
´pondirent-ils.
15. “Je ne vais pas vous suivre.
16. Je pourrais eˆ tre tue
´.
17. Ma famille ne sait pas o
u je suis alle
´.
18. Mais toi, dit-il en se tournant vers l’autre, tu peux te joindre a
`eux.”
19. Ainsi, l’un des jeunes hommes partit
20. tandis que l’autre rentra chez lui.
21. Les guerriers continue
`rent a
`remonter la rivie
`re jusqu’a
`une ville situe
´ede
l’autre coˆ te
´de Kalama.
22. Les gens descendirent a
`la rivie
`re
23. et commence
`rent a
`se battre;
24. beaucoup furent tue
´s.
25. A un moment donne
´, le jeune homme entendit l’un des guerriers dire: “Vite,
retournons chez nous: cet Indien a e
´te
´touche
´”.
26. A
`cet instant, il pensa: “Oh, ce sont des fantoˆ mes”.
27. Il ne se sentait pas mal,
526 Culture & Psychology 26(3)

28. mais ils disaient qu’il avait e
´te
´touche
´.
29. Ainsi, les cano€
es retourne
`rent a
`Egulac
30. et le jeune homme rejoignit la coˆ te et fit un feu a
`son domicile.
31. Il raconta a
`tout le monde: “Regardez, j’ai accompagne
´les fantoˆ mes et nous
sommes alle
´s combattre.
32. Beaucoup de nos compagnons ont e
´te
´tue
´s,
33. et beaucoup de ceux qui nous ont attaque
´s ont e
´te
´tue
´s.
34. Ils ont dit que j’avais e
´te
´touche
´
35. mais je ne me sentais pas malade”.
36. Il raconta tout cela
37. puis se tut.
38. Au lever du soleil, il s’effondra.
39. Quelque chose de noir s’e
´chappa de sa bouche.
40. Son visage se crispa.
41. Les gens sursaute
`rent et pousse
`rent des cris.
42. Il e
´tait mort.
Mercier and Kalampalikis 527