Recently, you took your nephew, Jamie, to a local fast food restaurant

Question

When you took Jamie home, he told his mother, "We drove to Wendy's, we got out of the car, we stood in line, I got a Kid's Meal with chicken nuggets and milk, and I got a cool toy, too." Jamie's recall of the visit to Wendy's was mostly correct but Wendy's was out of milk so Jamie got a soft drink instead. What can you tell Jamie's mother about scripts and how they can influence memory that might explain Jamie's incorrect memory of his lunch?
What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A good answer will be similar to the following:
Scripts are memory structures that help describe the sequence of events. Jamie obviously has a script for going to a fast food restaurant. Jamie's script includes eating chicken nuggets and drinking milk. Scripts can simplify remembering because they eliminate the need to remember each individual activity. However, a script can distort memories that are not consistent with one's script. Drinking a soft drink for lunch at a fast food restaurant is not consistent with Jamie's script for the event so he incorrectly "remembered" information that was consistent with his script.