What the debate is about

1. The reductionism and holism debate asks at what level a behaviour is best explained.
2. One side breaks the behaviour down into separate simpler parts, and the other keeps it whole.

Reductionism and reductionist

1. Reductionism is the noun for the approach itself.
2. Reductionist is the adjective you use to describe a theory, an explanation or a study that takes that approach.
   1. Write that the Multi-store Model is a reductionist theory, not that it is a reductionism.

Holism and holistic

1. Holism is the noun for the opposite approach.
2. Holistic is the adjective for a theory, an explanation or a study that keeps the whole person in view.
   1. Write that Bartlett's account of memory is holistic, not that it is a holism.

The Multi-store Model as a reductionist theory

1. The Multi-store Model (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968) splits memory into separate stores, namely the sensory register, short-term memory and long-term memory.
2. It also splits the work into separate processes, giving attention the job of moving information into short-term memory and rehearsal the job of moving it into long-term memory.
3. That is reductionist because one whole ability, remembering, is explained by breaking it into parts that each have their own capacity and duration.

Peterson and Peterson as reductionist research

1. Peterson and Peterson (1959) had students recall consonant trigrams after counting backwards in threes or fours to block rehearsal.
2. Correct recall fell from about 80 per cent after 3 seconds to about 10 per cent after 18 seconds.
3. The design is reductionist because it reduces memory to whether a meaningless three-letter string survives a few seconds, with meaning, context and the person's own experience deliberately stripped out.
4. That control makes the study standardised and replicable, which is a real strength for reliability.
5. It also makes the task artificial, so low ecological validity is the price of reducing memory that far.

Reconstructive memory as a holistic theory

1. Bartlett's theory of reconstructive memory treats remembering as the whole person actively rebuilding an event rather than a store playing it back.
2. What you recall depends on your schemas, the packets of prior knowledge and cultural expectation you bring to the task.
3. That is holistic because the explanation uses the person's whole background rather than one isolated part of a system.

War of the Ghosts as holistic research

1. Bartlett (1932) had 20 British participants read an unfamiliar Native American folk tale twice and then recall it repeatedly, from 15 minutes afterwards to almost ten years later.
2. The order of events and the main themes survived, but the detail was reshaped, so that canoes became boats and unfamiliar material was rationalised into something more acceptable.
3. Bartlett called this effort after meaning, and it is holistic because a whole meaningful story is being remembered by a whole person inside their own culture.
4. Meaningful material and long intervals give the study ecological validity, but the recall intervals were not standardised and scoring the distortions was subjective, which weakens its reliability and objectivity.

Reaching a judgement

1. Neither side is simply correct, so an answer that argues only one way stays one-sided.
2. Reductionist accounts win on precision, control and testability, which is why the Multi-store Model and Peterson and Peterson produce clear figures.
3. Holistic accounts win on realism, which is why Bartlett's findings look far more like everyday remembering.
4. A supported judgement usually concludes that the two levels answer different questions about the same behaviour and are strongest when used together.

Turning this into marks

1. Bring memory material to both sides, so the Multi-store Model and Peterson and Peterson for reductionism and Bartlett for holism.
2. Say what each study shows about the debate rather than simply describing what was done.
3. The mark most often lost is arguing only one side when the question names both.