Schema (psychology)
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In
People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include
History
"Schema" comes from the Greek word schēmat or schēma, meaning "figure".[7]
Prior to its use in psychology, the term "schema" had primarily seen use in philosophy. For instance, "schemata" (especially "transcendental schemata") are crucial to the architectonic system devised by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason.[8]
Early developments of the idea in psychology emerged with the gestalt psychologists (founded originally by Max Wertheimer) and Jean Piaget. The term schéma was introduced by Piaget in 1923.[9] In Piaget's later publications, action (operative or procedural) schémes were distinguished from figurative (representational) schémas, although together they may be considered a schematic duality.[10] In subsequent discussions of Piaget in English, schema was often a mistranslation of Piaget's original French schéme.[11] The distinction has been of particular importance in theories of embodied cognition and ecological psychology.[12]
This concept was first described in the works of British psychologist Frederic Bartlett, who drew on the term body schema used by neurologist Henry Head in 1932. In 1952, Jean Piaget, who was credited with the first cognitive development theory of schemas, popularized this ideology.[13] By 1977,[14] it was expanded into schema theory by educational psychologist Richard C. Anderson. Since then, other terms have been used to describe schema such as "frame", "scene", and "script".
Schematic processing
Through the use of schemata, a heuristic technique to encode and retrieve memories, the majority of typical situations do not require much strenuous processing. People can quickly organize new perceptions into schemata and act without effort.[15] The process, however, is not always accurate, and people may develop illusory correlations, which is the tendency to form inaccurate or unfounded associations between categories, especially when the information is distinctive.[4]
Nevertheless, schemata can influence and hamper the uptake of new information, such as when existing stereotypes, giving rise to limited or biased discourses and expectations, lead an individual to "see" or "remember" something that has not happened because it is more believable in terms of his/her schema.[16] For example, if a well-dressed businessman draws a knife on a vagrant, the schemata of onlookers may (and often do) lead them to "remember" the vagrant pulling the knife. Such distortion of memory has been demonstrated. (See § Background research below.) Furthermore, it has also been seen to affect the formation of episodic memory in humans. For instance, one is more likely to remember a pencil case in an office than a skull, even if both were present in the office, when tested on certain recall conditions.[17]
Schemata are interrelated and multiple conflicting schemata can be applied to the same information. Schemata are generally thought to have a level of activation, which can spread among related schemata. Through different factors such as current activation, accessibility, priming, and emotion, a specific schema can be selected.
Accessibility is how easily a schema can come to mind, and is determined by personal experience and expertise. This can be used as a cognitive shortcut, meaning it allows the most common explanation to be chosen for new information.
With priming (an increased sensitivity to a particular schema due to a recent experience), a brief imperceptible stimulus temporarily provides enough activation to a schema so that it is used for subsequent ambiguous information. Although this may suggest the possibility of
Background research
Frederic Bartlett
The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Frederic Bartlett.[18] Bartlett began presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations while subsequently monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc).[19] Bartlett was able to establish that individuals' existing schemata and stereotypes influence not only how they interpret "schema-foreign" new information but also how they recall the information over time. One of his most famous investigations involved asking participants to read a Native American folk tale, "The War of the Ghosts",[20] and recall it several times up to a year later. All the participants transformed the details of the story in such a way that it reflected their cultural norms and expectations, i.e. in line with their schemata. The factors that influenced their recall were:
- Omission of information that was considered irrelevant to a participant;
- Transformation of some of the details, or of the order in which events, etc., were recalled; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale;
- Rationalization: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be "padded out" and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question;
- Cultural shifts: the content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant.
Bartlett's work was crucially important in demonstrating that long-term memories are neither fixed nor unchanging but are constantly being adjusted as schemata evolve with experience. His work contributed to a framework of memory retrieval in which people construct the past and present in a constant process of narrative/discursive adjustment. Much of what people "remember" is
An important step in the development of schema theory was taken by the work of D.E. Rumelhart describing the understanding of narrative and stories.[21] Further work on the concept of schemata was conducted by W.F. Brewer and J.C. Treyens, who demonstrated that the schema-driven expectation of the presence of an object was sometimes sufficient to trigger its incorrect recollection.[22] An experiment was conducted where participants were requested to wait in a room identified as an academic's study and were later asked about the room's contents. A number of the participants recalled having seen books in the study whereas none were present. Brewer and Treyens concluded that the participants' expectations that books are present in academics' studies were enough to prevent their accurate recollection of the scenes.
In the 1970s, computer scientist Marvin Minsky was trying to develop machines that would have human-like abilities. When he was trying to create solutions for some of the difficulties he encountered he came across Bartlett's work and concluded that if he was ever going to get machines to act like humans he needed them to use their stored knowledge to carry out processes. A frame construct was a way to represent knowledge in machines, while his frame construct can be seen as an extension and elaboration of the schema construct. He created the frame knowledge concept as a way to interact with new information. He proposed that fixed and broad information would be represented as the frame, but it would also be composed of slots that would accept a range of values; but if the world did not have a value for a slot, then it would be filled by a default value.[23] Because of Minsky's work, computers now have a stronger impact on psychology. In the 1980s, David Rumelhart extended Minsky's ideas, creating an explicitly psychological theory of the mental representation of complex knowledge.[24]
Roger Schank and Robert Abelson developed the idea of a script, which was known as a generic knowledge of sequences of actions. This led to many new empirical studies, which found that providing relevant schema can help improve comprehension and recall on passages.[25]
Schemata have also been viewed from a sociocultural perspective with contributions from Lev Vygotsky, in which there is a transactional relationship between the development of a schema and the environment that influences it, such that the schema does not develop independently as a construct in the mind, but carries all the aspects of the history, social, and cultural meaning which influences its development. Schemata are not just scripts or frameworks to be called upon, but are active processes for solving problems and interacting with the world.[26] However, schemas can also contribute to influential outside sociocultural perspectives, like the development of racism tendencies, disregard for marginalized communities and cultural misconceptions. [27]
Modification
New information that falls within an individual's schema is easily remembered and incorporated into their
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was known best for his work with development of human knowledge. He believed knowledge was constructed on cognitive structures, and he believed people develop cognitive structures by accommodating and assimilating information. Accommodation is creating new schema that will fit better with the new environment or adjusting old schema. Accommodation could also be interpreted as putting restrictions on a current schema, and usually comes about when assimilation has failed. Assimilation is when people use a current schema to understand the world around them. Piaget thought that schemata are applied to everyday life and therefore people accommodate and assimilate information naturally.[31] For example, if this chicken has red feathers, Bob can form a new schemata that says "chickens with red feathers can lay eggs". This schemata, in the future, will either be changed or removed entirely.
In view of this, a person's new schemata may be an expansion of the schemata into a subtype. This allows for the information to be incorporated into existing beliefs without contradicting them. An example in social psychology would be the combination of a person's beliefs about women and their beliefs about business. If women are not generally perceived to be in business, but the person meets a woman who is, a new subtype of businesswoman may be created, and the information perceived will be incorporated into this subtype. Activation of either woman or business schema may then make further available the schema of "businesswoman". This also allows for previous beliefs about women or those in business to persist. Rather than modifying the schemata related to women or to business persons, the subtype is its own category.[4]
Self-schema
Schemata about oneself are considered to be grounded in the present and based on past experiences. Memories are framed in the light of one's self-conception. For example, people who have positive self-schemata (i.e. most people) selectively attend to flattering information and ignore unflattering information, with the consequence that flattering information is subject to deeper encoding, and therefore superior recall.[33] Even when encoding is equally strong for positive and negative feedback, positive feedback is more likely to be recalled.[34] Moreover, memories may even be distorted to become more favorable: for example, people typically remember exam grades as having been better than they actually were.[35] However, when people have negative self views, memories are generally biased in ways that validate the negative self-schema; people with low self-esteem, for instance, are prone to remember more negative information about themselves than positive information.[36] Thus, memory tends to be biased in a way that validates the agent's pre-existing self-schema.
There are three major implications of self-schemata. First, information about oneself is processed faster and more efficiently, especially consistent information. Second, one retrieves and remembers information that is relevant to one's self-schema. Third, one will tend to resist information in the environment that is contradictory to one's self-schema. For instance, students with a particular self-schema prefer roommates whose view of them is consistent with that schema. Students who end up with roommates whose view of them is inconsistent with their self-schema are more likely to try to find a new roommate, even if this view is positive.[37] This is an example of self-verification.
As researched by
The self-schema can also be self-perpetuating. It can represent a particular role in society that is based on stereotype, for example: "If a mother tells her daughter she looks like a tom boy, her daughter may react by choosing activities that she imagines a tom boy would do. Conversely, if the mother tells her she looks like a princess, her daughter might choose activities thought to be more feminine." This is an example of the self-schema becoming self-perpetuating when the person at hand chooses an activity that was based on an expectation rather than their desires.[39]
Schema therapy
Schema therapy was founded by
Schema therapy blends CBT with elements of
See also
- Cultural schema theory
- Memetics
- Personal construct theory
- Primal world beliefs
- Relational frame theory
- Social cognition
- Speed reading
References
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- ^ Samawi, Idris. "Schema". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
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- ^ Piaget, J. (1923). "Langage et pensée chez l'enfant" [Language and thought in children] (PDF) (in French). (3e éd. 1948 revue et avec un nouvel avant-propos et un nouveau chapitre II inséré utgave bind). Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, p. 43f.
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- ^ Dixon, Travis (2021-10-15). "Key Study: The Office Schema Study (Brewer and Treyens, 1981)". IB Psychology. Retrieved 2022-05-06.
- ^ a b Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press
- ^ Bartlett, F. C. (2003). Remembering: A study in experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ "War of the Ghosts, from Bartlett, Remembering, 1932/1995, p. 65". condor.depaul.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
- ^ Rumelhart, D.E. (1980) Schemata: the building blocks of cognition. In: R.J. Spiro et al. (Eds) Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. See also: Mandler, J. M. (1984). Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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External links
- Widmayer, Sharon Alayne (2002). "Schema Theory: An Introduction". )
- Bucci, Wilma (2010). "Emotion Schemas". thereferentialprocess.org.
- Huitt, W. (2018). Understanding reality: The importance of mental representations. In W. Huitt (Ed.), Becoming a Brilliant Star: Twelve core ideas supporting holistic education (pp. 65-81). IngramSpark.