Schemas & Research
What is a schema?

Framework of knowledge

Affects our perception and understanding.

Organise information to help recall what we have
seen/heard.
Palmer (1975)
Palmer (1975) – Aim & Method

Aim: To find out whether context would affect
perception.

Method:

64 student participants

Laboratory experiment
Palmer (1975) – Method 2

Participants were shown a visual scene (see below) for 2 seconds to provide
the context.

4 conditions (4 levels of the IV):

Appropriate: correctly recognising an appropriate objects that fits with the visual
scene.

Inappropriate, similar: correctly recognising an inappropriate object, that looks similar
to something expected in the visual scene.

Inappropriate, different: correctly recognising an inappropriate object that does not
fit with the visual scene.

No context: correctly recognising an object, when provided with no visual scene.
Palmer (1975) – Method 3

The experiment was a repeated measures design.

The number of correctly identified objectives was the
dependent variable.
Palmer (1975) – Results

What do these
results show us?
What can you
conclude from the
results of Palmer
(1975). Link this to
the original aim.
90%
83%
80%
% Correct Responses

70%
63%
60%
49%
50%
40%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
% Correct responses
Appropriate
Inappropriate,
similar
Inappropriate,
different
No context
83%
40%
49%
63%
Condition
Bartlett (1932)
Bartlett (1932) – Key definitions

Serial reproduction: a task where a piece of information is
passed from one participant to the next in a chain or series.
Differences between each version are measured.

Repeated reproduction: a task where the participant is
given a story or picture to remember. They then recall it
several times, after time delays. Differences between each
version are measured.
Bartlett (1932) - Aim
Aim: To investigate how information changes with each
reproduction and to find out why the information
changes.
Bartlett (1932) - Method
Procedure:
 Folk tale called ‘The war of the ghost’.
 Deliberately strange, with ideas and names that were
unfamiliar to the participants.
Participants completed a serial reproduction task and
repeated reproduction task.
Bartlett - Results
Findings: Very few participants recalled the story accurately. Bartlett
found changes to the following elements of the story:
Form
 Details
 Simplification
 Addition

The serial reproduction showed the same changes as the repeated
reproductions. They also showed clearly how one individual’s
interpretation affected all the others in the chain.
Bartlett - Conclusion
Conclusion: Unfamiliar material changes when it is
recalled. It becomes shorter, simpler and more
stereotyped. This may be due to the effect of schemas on
memory,
Carmichael, Hogan and
Walter (1932)
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932)
Aim: to find out whether words shown with pictures
would affect the way the pictures were remembered.
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932)
Procedure:
 Laboratory experiment.
 Ninety-five participants were split into three groups. They were shown 12
pictures.
 Between each picture the experimenter said “the next figure
resembles”…Followed by a word from either list 1 or list 2. A control group
(of nine participants) heard no verbal labels.
 These were the three levels of the independent variable. The experimental
design was independent groups.
 The participants were then asked to draw the pictures they had seen. Their
drawings were compared to the originals. This was the dependent variable.
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932)
Findings: The drawings produced by people who heard list 1
were very different from the drawings by people who heard
list 2. In each case the drawings looked like the words the
participants had heard.
In the list 1 group, 73 percent of the drawings resembled the
word given. In the list 2 group, 74 percent resembled either
one of the words. This shows that the words affected the
participants’ memory of the drawings.
Carmichael, Hogan and Walter (1932)
Conclusions: Memory for pictures is reconstructed. The
verbal context in which drawings are learned affects
recall because the memory of the word alters the way the
picture is represented.