Frederic Bartlett

Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett (born October 2, 1886 – died September 30, 1969) was a British psychologist, one of the pioneers of cognitive and experimental psychology in Great Britain.

Life

Frederick Bartlett was born in 1886 in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, England. After receiving private education, he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, where he studied logic and philosophy. He became a tutor at the University of Cambridge in 1909, and his interest gradually, mostly due to the influenced of the physician, ethnologist, and psychologist W.H.R. Rivers, turned to anthropology and psychology. In 1913 Bartlett was awarded a fellowship at St. John's College.

When in 1912 C. S. Myers (1873-1947), a lecturer in experimental psychology at Cambridge, decided to open an experimental psychology laboratory at Cambridge, first of such kind in the Great Britain, Bartlett helped him wholeheartedly (in 1937 Bartlett wrote an article about the early history of Cambridge lab, describing the events from this period of his life). After the World War I started in 1914, Bartlett became the "relief director" of the lab, starting series of studies of different kind. Among others, he did research on the detection of faint sounds and individual differences in how subjects described pictures. During that time he met Emily Mary Smith, a fellow researcher, whom he married in 1920. He also performed several studies on retrieval of memories, and perception and memory performance in people of other cultures, which became the base for his later work on memory.

In 1922 Bartlett became the director of the Cambridge laboratory, and in 1924 an editor of the British Journal of Psychology, a position he held for twenty-four years. In 1931 he was elected a first full-time professor of experimental psychology at Cambridge. During this time, Cambridge grew as the center of experimental psychology, with students and professors increasing in number. By 1957, 10 out of 16 professorship positions in Great Britain were held by students of Myers and Bartlett.

Throughout 1920s and 1930s Bartlett published numerous works on cognitions and memory, among others Psychology and Primitive Culture (1923), Feeling, imaging, and thinking (1925), Psychology and the Soldier (1927), The Problem of Noise (1934). In 1932 he wrote his masterpiece Remembering, in which he described his work on conventionalization. The same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a rare distinction for a psychologist.

With Kenneth Craik Bartlett was responsible for setting up the Medical Research Council's Applied Psychology Research Unit (APU) at Cambridge in 1944, serving as the director of the unit after Craik's early death in 1945. Bartlett performed this duty until 1953. He was knighted in 1948 for services to the Royal Air Force, on the basis of his wartime work in applied psychology

Bartlett retired from teaching in 1951, after almost 30 years of work at Cambridge. He died on September 30, 1969, in the age of 83.

Work

Bartlett’s interest laid primary in the area of perceptions, memory and cognitions. In his book Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932), he examines the influence of social factors on memory, describing his long-time research on memory recall and reconstruction. Bartlett paid special attention on the role of personal attitudes, interests, and social conventions on memory recall.

In the very approach to memory problems, Bartlett broke away from the German tradition. Instead of using nonsense syllables, he gave meaningful material to the subjects to memorize. He was not interested in mere recall of the material. Rather, the purpose was to study the effects of past experiences on the memorization and memory retention.

Bartlett used two methods in the study. In the first, the method of repeated reproduction, the participants were given a picture or told a story, which they needed to reproduce several times over several weeks. In the second, the method of serial reproduction, the participants were given a picture or told a story, which they needed to pass it on to another participant. Bartlett concluded that individuals, instead of merely reproducing the material, re-create it in the light of their past experiences. The recall was biased, and depended on numerous things – attitudes, interests and social standards. His claims he supported with his cross-cultural studies. He was able to show that different cultural properties influence the retrieval of memories.

Bartlett claimed that memories were not simply stored in one place in the brain, but are dispersed across the complex “memory schemata”. The schemata thus consist of numerous individual memory traces, which can be retrieved or even changed separately from each other. Different schemata exist in human brain, linked together, Bartlett claimed, by instincts, interests, and ideals – instincts playing role especially in childhood, and interests and ideals later in life.

Legacy

Bartlett’s studies were rather different from traditional Ebbinghaus’s experiments. They expanded our understanding of how people memorize things. Rather than just repeating what has been remembered, we re-construct the past. We rework our memories in the light of our past experience. The notion of schema or conceptual model originated with Bartlett and is still used in psychology at the beginning of the 21st century.

Bartlett was a true pioneer of experimental psychology. The U.K. Ergonomics Society awards a Bartlett medal in his honor, and the Experimental Psychology Society holds an annual Bartlett Lecture.

Bibliography

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1923. Psychology and primitive culture. Olympic Marketing Corp. ISBN 0837132444

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1925. Feeling, imaging, and thinking. British Journal of Psychology 16, 16-28.

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1927. Psychology and the soldier. London: Cambridge University Press.

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1934. The problem of noise. London: Cambridge University Press.

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1936. Autobiography. In C. Murchison, (ed.), History of psychology in autobiography. Russell & Russell Pub. ISBN 0846200996

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1937. Cambridge, England: 1887-1937. American Journal of Psychology, 50, 97-110.

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1950. Religion as experience, belief, action. London: Cumberledge

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1951. The mind at work and play. London: Allen and Unwin.

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1967 (original work from 1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. London: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521094410

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1973. Political propaganda. Octagon Books. ISBN 0374904251

• Bartlett, Frederic C. 1982 (original work from 1958). Thinking: An experimental and social study. London: Greenwood Press Reprint. ISBN 0313234124

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Broadbent, D. E. 1970. Obituary of Sir F. C. Bartlett. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 16, 1-16.

• Harris, A. D. & Zangwill, O. L. 1973. The writings of Sir Frederic Bartlett, C.B.E., F.R.S.: An annotated handlist. British Journal of Psychology, 64, 493-510.

• Saito, A., ed. 1999. Bartlett: Culture and cognition. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415201721

• Zusne, Leonard. 1984. Biographical dictionary of psychology. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313240272

External links

• Applied Psychology Unit (APU) – History of the APU where Bartlett served as director from 1945 to 1953.

• Sir Frederic Bartlett Archive – Autobiography

• F.C. Bartlett – Biography

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