UC Irvine

Matters of interest, salience and chunking in stories all lead to basic questions in anthropology and psychology and in the new field of cognitive science. The way in which stories evolve is a special case of the general evolution of cultural patterns. In anthropology evolutionary theories have suffered because few investigators moved down to the level of microanalysis where the actual mechanisms of cultural transmission operate. Psychology, on the other hand, has suffered by emphasizing a top-down approach where higher level categories were made up on an ad hoc basis before being subjected to experimental verification. It is the interaction between patterns and schema that must be focused on. One cannot analyze the evolution of stories without looking closely at the broader cultural base in which they are embedded. It requires an analysis of the behavioral logic that underlies these stories and the way in which elements of the stories are made more salient and valuable to the individuals that are involved in them as well as a study of the particular elements and structures of the stories themselves. © 1982.