Ielts reading

TEST 2 – Storytelling

Match each statement with the correct person.

Dr Tom Sjoblom, University of Helsinki, explores the link between narratives and memories Storytelling seems to be a fundamental feature of human existence. In a recent article, Paul Hernadi points out that storytelling and narratives are such widespread phenomenon that they could justifiably be included in a list of human universities (Hernadi, 2001). But our craving for narratives or stories, goes deeper than this. It is embedded in our mental images of whatever happens around us (Boyer, 2001). In other words, creating narratives is our way of connecting and interacting with our environment (Mink, 1978).

As a species, we humans appear to have a much more active attitude towards our environment than any other species. Our bodies and minds not only adapt to the surrounding world, but we actually shape and construct our environment to better suit our needs (Plotkin,1983). From this perspective, culture is nothing more than an environment that we create ourselves. Culture is not something in opposition to nature. Instead it is a part of it; It is - in a way – nature modified to better suit the requirements of the human life form.
Thus, culture and all aspects of it are basically products of natural selection and, more specifically, the evolution of the human mind (Boyer, 2001).
Between 60,000 and 20,000 years ago the first sign of art and religion appeared and humans started to build houses and invent more sophisticated tools and weapons, such as bows and arrows. This period has been called the ‘big bang’ of human culture. There is still much controversy on how to explain this period of innovation, but a growing consensus connects the greater cultural energy and innovation of the period to the emergence of individuals as creative beings (Mellars,1994)
The archaeologist Steven Miller has suggested that this creativity can be explained by the emergence of a ‘cognitively fluid’ mentality. In other words, the ability to link together information from different areas of our life. Cognitive fluidity makes it possible for human beings to emerge from the concrete situational present and to adopt a more general and abstract approach (Mithen, 1996). As Gerald Eldeman puts it, ‘With that ability come the abilities to model the world, to make explicit comparisons and to weigh outcomes; through such comparisons comes the ability of reorganising plans.’(Eldeman,1992) Eldeman goes further than this and argues that it is the flexibility of our memory system which is the key to understanding how cognitive fluidity affects our ability to learn new things in general (Eldeman, 1992). The basic idea here is that our memory does not really represent the past as it happened. In most of the cases, it does not even represent it as it is stored and coded into our brains. Instead, our memory prefers creating the past from the perspective of how relevant it is to our present situation. Striving for this kind of coherence, our mind combines stored representations and blends information stored in them (Holyoak and Thagard, 1995). Thus, all things being equal, we do not remember the past, we create it. The medieval art of memory, known as memoria, has interested historians for a long time, but seldom from a psychological or cognitive perspective.
Recently, this has been changed by the work of Mary Carruthers. According to Carruthers, memoria was the reason why literature, in its fundamental sense existed in medieval Europe. It was the process by which a work of literature became both institutionalised by the group and learned by its individual members (Carruthers, 1990)
For those medieval experts who were educated in the art of memory there were two principal strategies for achieving their goal. The first and older of these strategies, attributed to Aristotle, relied on the concept of ‘mental images’. Supporters of this strategy argued that remembering was to see mental pictures, which are firmly imprinted upon the memory. Thus the best way to memorise narratives is to stimulate the act of memorising by using visual aids such as emotion-provoking representations, or so-called ‘word pictures’. Descriptive language can also be used to create a kind of mental painting, although no actual pictures are present (Carruthers, 1990). As Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) puts it: ‘something is not secure
enough by hearing, but it is made firm by seeing’ (Albertus I. 1. II. 6-7)
The second, and more popular, strategy for memorising narratives was rote learning. This was achieved by the frequent repetition of a text until it was accurately memorised. In this case, the process of memorising was aided by the use of rhythmic and/or formulaic expressions, and by breaking longer texts into numbered segments and then memorizing them one by one(Carruthers, 1990).
The followers of this strategy criticised the use of visual imagery because of its inaccuracy. It was argued that the use of visual aids was marginally helpful at best, providing cues for recollection, but could not in itself guarantee the accuracy of the memorising process (Carruthers, 1990). The latter countered the criticism by arguing that, while in ordinary circumstances the accuracy of visual imagery could not be trusted, this problem would disappear if the visual imagery was strong enough to make a person emotionally engaged with the text. Indeed, they argued, it is the creation of strong emotional responses that makes the use of visual images such a powerful tool for memory creation (Carruthers, 1990).