Schema Theory

Schema

A deeply rooted mental framework that organizes your knowledge, beliefs and expectations about something. Helps you make sense of information.

Encoding

The process of transferring information from your senses into mental representations in memory (like long-term memory).

Mental Representation

A reflection or mental construction of an object, event or concept in your mind.

Scripts

A type of schema that represents a sequence of typical events or actions, like your morning routine script.

Retrieval

The process of extracting and accessing information stored in your long-term memory when you need to use it.

Types of Schemas

• Social schemas - Mental frameworks about groups of people

• Self-schemas - Mental representations of one's self-concept

• Scripts - Schemas for sequences of typical events/actions

Bottom-Up Processing

Processing information based purely on the knowledge itself, without influence from prior knowledge or bias.

Top-Down Processing

Processing information through the lens of your existing knowledge, expectations and schemas, which can act as a filter.

Bransford & Johnson (1972)

Aim: Effect of context on text comprehension & memory

Method of Bransford & Johnson (1972)

Experiment, independent measures design

Participants of Bransford & Johnson (1972)

50 high school student volunteers

Procedure of Bransford & Johnson (1972)

Heard recorded passage, recalled & wrote down

Conditions of Bransford & Johnson (1972)

1) No context 1 (heard once) 2) No context 2 (heard twice) 3) Context before (picture) 4) Context after 5) Partial context

Results of Bransford & Johnson (1972)

Passage had 14 idea units

• No context 1: Recalled 3.6 units

• No context 2: Recalled 3.8 units

• Context before: Recalled 8.0 units

• Context after: Recalled 3.6 units

• Partial context: Recalled 4.0 units

Conclusion of Bransford & Johnson (1972)

Supports schema theory - full context picture before helped activate relevant schemas to better encode/retrieve information

Darley & Gross (1983)

Tested effects of social schemas

Procedure of Darley & Gross (1983)

• 2 groups watched same video of girl taking academic test

• Group 1 told girl was high SES, Group 2 told low SES

• Participants rated the girl's performance

Results of Darley & Gross (1983)

Group told high SES rated girl's performance higher than group told low SES

Conclusion of Darley & Gross (1983)

Social schemas about SES influenced interpretation of the ambiguous situation, supporting schema theory