schema theory

schema

cognitive frameworks or mental structures that organize knowledge and guide information processing

assimilation

integrating new information into an existing schema without changing it

accomodation

creating new schema to incorporate new information

scripts

schemas for events ( celebrating a holiday ) guide behavior over time

stereotypes

social schemas that can influence perception and memory , sometimes influenced by confirmation bias

conformation bias

the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs while ignoring the other information

bartlett ( 1932 ) war of ghosts aim

to investigate how memory is reconstructed based on pre existing schemas

bartlett ( 1932 ) war of ghosts sample

british participants

bartlett ( 1932 ) war of ghosts procedure

participants were told a native american story called war of ghosts , lter they were asked to recall the story , sometimes after varying intervals , the retelling were then analyzed

bartlett ( 1932 ) war of ghosts results

partcipants change the story to fit into their own cultural expectations , the story become shorter , and some unfamiliar words has been changed to more familiar ones

bartlett ( 1932 ) war of ghosts conclusion

memory is not a passive recall of information rather an active process that is influenced by our existing knowledge

bartlett ( 1932 ) war of ghosts strenghts

high ecological validity

bartlett ( 1932 ) war of ghosts

low internal validity

Brewer & Treyens (1981) aim

to investigate the role of schema in encoding and retreival of memory

Brewer & Treyens (1981) sample

86 university psychology students

Brewer & Treyens (1981) procedure

participants were asked to wait in an office for 35 seconds the office was set up to look like a real office but with unusual items like a toy and without some expected items like books , then they were asked to recall what they had seen either through written recall or drawing

Brewer & Treyens (1981) results

participants were more likely to recall the typical items in the office due to office schemas , they recalled some items that were not present in the office like books and the unusual items were less remembered unless they were particularly distinctive

Brewer & Treyens (1981) conclusion

schema influence memory , people tend to remember items consistent with their schema and may falsley recall expected but absent items

Brewer & Treyens (1981) strenghts

high internal validity / supports schema theory by using quantitative and qualitative data

Brewer & Treyens (1981) limitations

low ecological validity / Demand characteristics – participants knew they were part of a memory experiment.