Mental Processes

This study was conducted since the author noticed that people tend to distort information when they are asked to recall the information. From this study, the author found out that there were some mental processes which accompanied the reproduction process, they were omission, rationalization, using dominant theme, and transformation of information. Omission occurred when the information was not readily recalled, or it had trivial influence of the story. Rationalization appeared because the subjects added some information that went beyond the text to explain certain incongruous passage. Using dominant theme happened when little elaboration of details could be found and several seemed to be related to what the subjects thought should happen, rather than what actually did happen in the story. Transformation of information was performed since the subjects replaced unfamiliar words with the familiar ones. And transformation of sequence happened when some events were characterized as appearing earlier in the story, others later.