Schema Theory
3.1
• Self-representation – an idea of who you are
and how you look
• The same you have for others, objects,
animals, the world…
• Mental representations are organized in
categories stored in our memory
• We are able to manipulate mental
representations to think of other situations
and about the future – what might happen…
(in books, films, make plans, calculate risks)
• What we expect to happen are pre-stored
mental representations!
Schema theory
(theory about information processing)
• “An active organisation of past reactions or past
experiences” Barlett 1932
• Generally: schema is a stored framework or body of
knowledge about some topic (aka script or a cognitive
structure)
• When we encounter new material, we try to relate the
material to something we already know to existing
schemata.
• If the material does not match an existing schema, we
tend to alter the material to make it fit.
• Consists of concepts that are related to each
other
• Encodes general knowledge that can be
applied to many different situations
• Can be hierarchical, i.e. consist of subschemata/different levels
• can be organized in infinite ways
Activity
• when I say… what do you see?
• Make your our schema (in any structure you
would like/prefer)
Rate the comprehensibility of this
passage (1-7)
• The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange items into
different groups. Of course one pile might be sufficient depending
on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due
to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty
well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to
do few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not
seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be
expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem
complicated. Soon, however it will become just another facet of life.
It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the
immediate future, but then, one never can tell. After the procedure
is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again.
Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they
will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be
repeated. However, that is part of life
Rate the comprehensibility of this
passage (1-7)
Washing Clothes
• The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange items into
different groups. Of course one pile might be sufficient depending
on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due
to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty
well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to
do few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not
seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be
expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem
complicated. Soon, however it will become just another facet of life.
It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the
immediate future, but then, one never can tell. After the procedure
is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again.
The n they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they
will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be
repeated. However, that is part of life.
What does schemas do?
• They guide our behaviour
• They predict likely happenings
• They help us to make sense of current
experience
• They allow us to form expectations about
situations, the world and people
• They simplify reality
• They organise our knowledge and assist recall
Schema
• Due to this theory – recall is not a true, exact
recall or reproduction of the original material.
• Instead, it is a reconstruction based on elements
from the original story and on our existing
schemata.
• (picture question)
What did you remember?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Chair?
Desk?
Skull?
Wine bottle?
Coffee pot?
Wine basket?
Books?
Typewriter?
Brewer & Treyens (1981)
• Individual participants were asked to wait in an
office. After 35 seconds, participants were taken
to another room where they were asked to recall
everything in the room in which they had been
waiting.
• People showed a strong tendency to recall
objects consistent with a typical “office schema”.
Such as desk, chair, books
• Few people remembered items inconsistent with
a typical “office schema” such as the skull
Two more supporting studies
• Darley and Gross 1983:
Schema processing in the social world
• Lab experiment
• Video of a girl playing in a poor or rich
environment
• Then a video of the same girl taking an
intelligence test
• Asked to judge the future of the girls –
Darley and Gross 1983
• They all said that the rich girl would do well
and poor girl would do less well.
• Demonstrates that participants probably have
pre-stored schemas of what it means to be
poor/rich
Schema theory and memory processes
• Encoding: transforming sensory information into a
meaningful memory
• Storage: encoded information in memory – lost or
consolidated
• Retrieval: use the stored information
• Schema processing can affect memory at all stages!
• Read the research by Anderson & Pichert
(1978) on p. 72 and explain how that research
shows how schema affect all stages.
Evaluation of schema theory
• + A lot of research support the schema theory,
that it affects cognitive processes such as
memory (Bartlett and Anderson & Pichert 1978)
• + Has contributed to an understanding of
memory distortions as well as social cognitions
• - Limitations: not clear on how schemas are
acquired in the first place and how they actually
influence cognitive processes
- Therefore Too vague to use according to Cohen
1993
See Handout “Evaluation of Schema theory “
• Last study: Bartlett’s The war
of the ghosts which we will
come back to later in this
chapter