In psychology and cognitive science, a schema (: schemata or schemas) describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of organizing and perceiving new information, such as a mental schema or conceptual model. Schemata influence attention and the absorption of new knowledge: people are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while reinterpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit. Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. This is because schemas are shaped in early childhood, leading to inflexible belief from their foundation at a young age. Schemata can help in understanding the world and the rapidly changing environment. People can organize new perceptions into schemata quickly as most situations do not require complex thought when using schema, since automatic thought is all that is required.
People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include mental models, social schemas, stereotypes, social roles, scripts, worldviews, heuristics, and archetypes. In Piaget's theory of development, children construct a series of schemata, based on the interactions they experience, to help them understand the world.
History "Schema" comes from the Greek word schēmat or schēma, meaning "figure".
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.
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.Piaget, J. (1923). (3e éd. 1948 revue et avec un nouvel avant-propos et un nouveau chapitre II inséré utgave bind). Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, p. 43f. 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. In subsequent discussions of Piaget in English, schema was often a mistranslation of Piaget's original French schéme. The distinction has been of particular importance in theories of embodied cognition and ecological psychology.
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. By 1977, 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. 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.
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, leads an individual to "see" or "remember" something that has not happened because it is more believable in terms of their 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 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.
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 subliminal messages, the effect of priming is so fleeting that it is difficult to detect outside laboratory conditions.
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.Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press 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).Bartlett, F. C. (2003). Remembering: A study in experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge University Press. 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 Chinook 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; 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 confabulated narrative (adjusted and rationalized) which allows them to think of the past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable or inaccurate at any given time.
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.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. 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. 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. 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.
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.
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. However, schemas can also contribute to influential outside sociocultural perspectives, like the development of racism tendencies, disregard for marginalized communities and cultural misconceptions.
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