Schema Theory
- Schema theory seeks to explain our interpretation
of the world from a psychological perspective, which stems from cognitive
science.
- Schemas (or schemata) are cognitive structures
(mental templates or frames) that represent a person’s knowledge about
objects, people or situations.
- The concept of schema was first used by
Jean
Piaget in 1926. (He suggested that children learn using existing schemas
that are accomodated or assimilated).
- Schemas are derived from prior experience
and knowledge. They simplify reality, setting up expectations about what is
probable in relation to particular social and textual contexts.
- Schemas are used to organise our knowledge,
to assist recall, to guide our behaviour, to predict likely happenings and
to help us to make sense of current experiences.
- Schema theory predicts that we interpret
our experiences by using relevant social and textual schemas. Bartlett (1932)
described how schemata influence memory in his research with ‘Story of
the ghosts’.
- A schema can be seen as a kind of framework
with ‘slots’ for ‘variables’, some of them filled-in and
others empty.
- The slots are either filled in already with
compulsory values (e.g. that a dog is an animal) or ‘default values’
(e.g. that a dog has four legs) or are empty (optional variables) until ‘instantiated’
with values from the current situation (e.g. that the dog’s colour is
black).
- When what seems like the most appropriate
schema is activated, inferences are generated to fill in any necessary but
inexplicit details with assumed values from the schema.
- If no relevant schema is retrieved from
long-term memory a new schema is created. Explicit events and inferences,
as well as new schemas, are stored in long-term memory.
- Schema-driven processing is a top-down perceptual
process that guides a selective search for data relevant to the expectations
set up by the schema.
- Schema-driven processing interacts with
bottom-up data-driven processes (which may lead to the activation, modification
or generation of a schema).
- Schema theory is consistent with the notion
of both perception and recall as constructive and selective cognitive processes.
- Schemas are culturally specific: schemas
for common routines vary socio-culturally- even within a single country.
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