Schema (psychology)
Encyclopedia
A schema in psychology
and cognitive science
, describes any of several concepts including:
A schema for oneself is called a "self schema". Schemata for other people are called "person schemata". Schemata for roles or occupations are called "role schemata", and schemata for events or situations are called "event schemata" (or scripts).
Schemata influence our attention, as we are more likely to notice things that fit into our schema. If something contradicts our schema, it may be encoded or interpreted as an exception or as unique. Thus, schemata are prone to distortion. They influence what we look for in a situation. They have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. We are inclined to place people who do not fit our schema in a "special" or "different" category, rather than to consider the possibility that our schema may be faulty. As a result of schemata, we might act in such a way that actually causes our expectations to come true.
The concept of schemata was initially introduced into psychology and education through the work of the British psychologist, Frederic Bartlett
(1886–1969). This learning theory views organized knowledge as an elaborate network of abstract mental structures that represent one's understanding of the world. Schema theory was developed by the educational psychologist R. C. Anderson. The term schema was used by Jean Piaget
in 1926, so it was not an entirely new concept. Anderson, however, expanded the meaning.
People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include Rubric (academic)
, social schemas, stereotype
s, social roles, scripts, worldviews, and archetype
s. In Piaget's theory of development, children adopt a series of schemata to understand the world.
and Piaget
. However, it is with the work of Bartlett (himself drawing on the term as used by the neurologist Henry Head
) that the term came to be used in its modern sense. Bartlett's work was neglected in America during the behaviouristic era until its wholesale recapitulation in Ulric Neisser
's massively influential Cognitive Psychology (1967). Neisser's work led to the ubiquity of the term in psychology, and its extension to other disciplines, notably the cognitive and computational sciences. Since that time, many other terms have been used as well, including "frame", "scene", and "script".
processing—automatic processing
is all that is required. People can quickly organize new perceptions into schemata and act effectively without effort. For example, most people have a stairway schema and can apply it to climb staircases they've never seen before.
However, schemata can influence and hamper the uptake of new information (proactive interference), such as when existing stereotype
s, giving rise to limited or bias
ed discourses and expectations (prejudice
s), may lead an individual to "see" or "remember" something that has not happened because it is more believable in terms of his/her schema. 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.)
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. Which schema is selected can depend on factors such as current activation, accessibility, and priming
.
Accessibility is how easily a schema comes to mind, and is determined by personal experience and expertise. This can be used as a cognitive shortcut; it allows the most common explanation to be chosen for new information
.
With priming, 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 subliminal messages, the effect of priming is so fleeting that it is difficult to detect outside laboratory conditions. Furthermore, the mere exposure effect —which requires consciousness of the stimuli— is far more effective than priming.
The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Bartlett (1932). By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc.), 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", 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:
Bartlett's work was crucially important in demonstrating that long-term memories are neither fixed nor immutable but are constantly being adjusted as our schemata evolve with experience. In a sense it supports the existentialist
view that we construct our past and present in a constant process of narrative/discursive adjustment, and that much of what we "remember" is actually confabulated (adjusted and rationalized) narrative that allows us to think of our past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of our memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable to our conscious memory at any given time.
An important step in the development of schema theory was taken by the work of D.E. Rumelhart describing our understanding of narrative and stories. See also J. M. Mandler
Further work on the concept of schemata was conducted by Brewer and Treyens (1981) who demonstrated that the schema-driven expectation of the presence of an object was sometimes sufficient to trigger its erroneous recollection. 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.
Assimilation
is the reuse of schemata to fit the new information. For example, when an unfamiliar dog is seen, a person will probably just assimilate it into their dog schema. However, if the dog behaves strangely, and in ways that don't seem dog-like, there will be accommodation
as a new schema is formed for that particular dog.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, describes any of several concepts including:
- An organized pattern of thought or behavior.
- A structured cluster of pre-conceived ideas.
- A mental structure that represents some aspect of the world.
- A specific knowledge structure or cognitive representation of the self.
- A mental framework centering on a specific theme, that helps us to organize social information.
- Structures that organize our knowledge and assumptions about something and are used for interpreting and processing information.
A schema for oneself is called a "self schema". Schemata for other people are called "person schemata". Schemata for roles or occupations are called "role schemata", and schemata for events or situations are called "event schemata" (or scripts).
Schemata influence our attention, as we are more likely to notice things that fit into our schema. If something contradicts our schema, it may be encoded or interpreted as an exception or as unique. Thus, schemata are prone to distortion. They influence what we look for in a situation. They have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. We are inclined to place people who do not fit our schema in a "special" or "different" category, rather than to consider the possibility that our schema may be faulty. As a result of schemata, we might act in such a way that actually causes our expectations to come true.
The concept of schemata was initially introduced into psychology and education through the work of the British psychologist, Frederic Bartlett
Frederic Bartlett
Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett FRS was a British psychologist and the first professor of experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the forerunners of cognitive psychology...
(1886–1969). This learning theory views organized knowledge as an elaborate network of abstract mental structures that represent one's understanding of the world. Schema theory was developed by the educational psychologist R. C. Anderson. The term schema was used by Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
in 1926, so it was not an entirely new concept. Anderson, however, expanded the meaning.
People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include Rubric (academic)
Rubric (academic)
A rubric is an assessment tool for communicating expectations of quality. Rubrics support student self-reflection and self-assessment as well as communication between assessor and assessees...
, social schemas, stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s, social roles, scripts, worldviews, and archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
s. In Piaget's theory of development, children adopt a series of schemata to understand the world.
History of schema theory
Early developments of the idea in psychology emerged with the Gestalt psychologistsGestalt psychology
Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies...
and Piaget
Piaget
Piaget is surname of:* Edouard Piaget , Swiss entomologist* Jean Piaget , Swiss developmental psychologist* Paul Piaget , a Swiss rower...
. However, it is with the work of Bartlett (himself drawing on the term as used by the neurologist Henry Head
Henry Head
Sir Henry Head, FRS was an English neurologist who conducted pioneering work into the somatosensory system and sensory nerves. Much of this work was conducted on himself, in collaboration with the psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, by severing and reconnecting sensory nerves and mapping how sensation...
) that the term came to be used in its modern sense. Bartlett's work was neglected in America during the behaviouristic era until its wholesale recapitulation in Ulric Neisser
Ulric Neisser
Ulric Neisser is an American psychologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a faculty member at Cornell University. In 1995, he headed an American Psychological Association task force that reviewed The Bell Curve and related controversies in the study of intelligence. The task...
's massively influential Cognitive Psychology (1967). Neisser's work led to the ubiquity of the term in psychology, and its extension to other disciplines, notably the cognitive and computational sciences. Since that time, many other terms have been used as well, including "frame", "scene", and "script".
Thought using schemata
Schemata are an effective tool for understanding the world. Through the use of schemata, most everyday situations do not require effortfulEffortfulness
In psychology effortfulness is the subjective experience of exertion in connection with an activity, but especially the mental aspects of an activity. In many applications, effortfulness is simply reported by a patient, client, or experimental subject. There has been some work establishing an...
processing—automatic processing
Automaticity
Automaticity is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit. It is usually the result of learning, repetition, and practice....
is all that is required. People can quickly organize new perceptions into schemata and act effectively without effort. For example, most people have a stairway schema and can apply it to climb staircases they've never seen before.
However, schemata can influence and hamper the uptake of new information (proactive interference), such as when existing stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s, giving rise to limited or bias
Bias
Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives. Bias can come in many forms.-In judgement and decision making:...
ed discourses and expectations (prejudice
Prejudice
Prejudice is making a judgment or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy, or "judging a book by its cover"...
s), may lead an individual to "see" or "remember" something that has not happened because it is more believable in terms of his/her schema. 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.)
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. Which schema is selected can depend on factors such as current activation, accessibility, and priming
Priming (psychology)
Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus. It can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition...
.
Accessibility is how easily a schema comes to mind, and is determined by personal experience and expertise. This can be used as a cognitive shortcut; it allows the most common explanation to be chosen for new information
Availability heuristic
The availability heuristic is a phenomenon in which people predict the frequency of an event, or a proportion within a population, based on how easily an example can be brought to mind....
.
With priming, 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 subliminal messages, the effect of priming is so fleeting that it is difficult to detect outside laboratory conditions. Furthermore, the mere exposure effect —which requires consciousness of the stimuli— is far more effective than priming.
Background research
Sufferers of Korsakov's syndrome are unable to form new memories, and must approach every situation as if they had just seen it for the first time. Many sufferers adapt by continually forcing their world into barely-applicable schemata, often to the point of incoherence and self-contradiction.The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Bartlett (1932). By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc.), 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", 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 immutable but are constantly being adjusted as our schemata evolve with experience. In a sense it supports the existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
view that we construct our past and present in a constant process of narrative/discursive adjustment, and that much of what we "remember" is actually confabulated (adjusted and rationalized) narrative that allows us to think of our past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of our memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable to our conscious memory at any given time.
An important step in the development of schema theory was taken by the work of D.E. Rumelhart describing our understanding of narrative and stories. See also J. M. Mandler
Further work on the concept of schemata was conducted by Brewer and Treyens (1981) who demonstrated that the schema-driven expectation of the presence of an object was sometimes sufficient to trigger its erroneous recollection. 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.
Modification of schemata
New information that falls within an individual's schema is easily remembered and incorporated into their worldview. However, when new information is perceived that does not fit a schema, many things can happen. The most common reaction is to simply ignore or quickly forget the new information. This can happen on a deep level— frequently an individual does not become conscious of or even perceive the new information. People may also interpret the new information in a way that minimises how much they must change their schemas. For example, Bob thinks that chickens don't lay eggs. He then sees a chicken laying an egg. Instead of changing the part of his schema that says 'chickens don't lay eggs', he is likely to adopt the belief that the animal in question that he has just seen laying an egg is not a real chicken. This is an example of 'disconfirmation bias', the tendency to set higher standards for evidence that contradicts one's expectations. However, when the new information cannot be ignored, existing schemata must be changed.Assimilation
Assimilation
Assimilation may refer to:*Assimilation , a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound...
is the reuse of schemata to fit the new information. For example, when an unfamiliar dog is seen, a person will probably just assimilate it into their dog schema. However, if the dog behaves strangely, and in ways that don't seem dog-like, there will be accommodation
Accommodation
Accommodation may refer to:* A dwelling* A place of temporary lodging* Accommodation , a theological principle linked to divine revelation within the Christian church* Accommodation , a term used in United States contract law...
as a new schema is formed for that particular dog.
Self-schemata
Schemata about oneself are considered to be grounded in the present and based on past experiences. Memories, as mentioned, are framed in the light of one's self-conception. 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. This is also related to self-verification.Schema therapy
Schema therapy was founded by Dr Jeffrey Young, and represents a development of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) specifically for treating personality disorders . The therapy blends CBT with elements of Gestalt, object relations, constructivist and psychoanalytical therapies in order to treat the characterological difficulties which both constitute personality disorders and which underlie many of the chronic depressive or anxiety-involving symptoms which present in the clinic. CBT, Young felt, may be an effective treatment for presenting symptoms, but without the conceptual or clinical resources for tackling the underlying structures (maladaptive schemas) which consistently organise the patient's experience, the patient is likely to lapse back into unhelpful modes of relating to others and attempting to meet their needs. Early Maladaptive Schemas are described by Young as: broad and pervasive themes or patterns; made up of memories, feelings, sensations, and thoughts; regarding oneself and one's relationships with others; developing during childhood or adolescence; elaborated throughout life; and dysfunctional in that they lead to self-defeating behaviour. Examples include schemas of abandonment/instability, mistrust/abuse, emotional deprivation, and defectiveness/shame.See also
- Cognitive dissonanceCognitive dissonanceCognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying,...
- MemeticsMemeticsMemetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of...
- Social cognitionSocial cognitionSocial cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, in the brain, of information relating to conspecifics, or members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology in which these processes were studied according to the...
- Behavioral scriptBehavioral scriptIn the behaviorism approach to psychology, behavioral scripts are a sequence of expected behaviors for a given situation. For example, when an individual enters a restaurant they choose a table, order, wait, eat, pay the bill, and leave. People continually follow scripts which are acquired through...