Brewer and Treyens ( 1981 ), schema theory study

Aim

To investigate the role of schema in the formations and retrieval of episodic memory ( Memory of specific events and details )

Procedure

• 86 university psychology students.

• They were seated and waited in a room which resembled an office.

• It consisted of typical office objects like typewriters, paper and a coffee pot and there was also a table with tools and electronics. The walls were decorated with posters and calendars and the room had shelves with items on it

• Some of the items in the room would normally not be present in the room ( e.g a skull, toy/

• The participants have been asked to wait in that room ( they did not know that the experiment had already begun but it did )

• All the chairs except one had an objects on them, the researcher di this so all the participants had the same point of view of the office

• After 35 seconds participants were called into another room and then asked what they remembered from the office. When they finished the experiment they were given a questionnaire

• The important question was "did you think that you would be asked to remember the objects in the room. 94% said no"

• 30 participants carried our a written recall and then verbal recognition; 29 did drawing and 27 did verbal ONLY

• Participants were asked to write down a description of as many objects as they could remember from the room.

• They had to state the specific location, shape, size and colour of the object.

• "write your description as if you were describing the room for someone who had never seen it"

• They were then given recognition test in which they were given a booklet containing the list of objects. They were asked to rate each item for how sure they were that the object was in the room ( 1 was no, 6 yes ).

• The questionnaire consisted of 131 objects: 61 were in the room 70 were not.

Findings

• The participants were most likely to remember items that were congruent with the schema of an office ( expected items )

• The incongruent items were not often recalled.

• When they were asked to select items on the list, they were most likely to identify the incongruent items ( if thye didn't remember a skull during free recall but gave it a 6 on the verbal recognition task. )

• Had a higher rate of identifying obkects which were schema congruent but not in the room

Conclusion

Appears that schema played a role in both the formation and recalling of the objects in the office

Evaluation

•  The results do not indicate a high number of errors and do not explain why some recalled these objects yet others did not.

• There is no way to verify the schema of the participants before the experiment, but the researchers did a pilot study by using a questionnaire with students to determine schema-consistent objects.

• There are ethical concerns about the deception used in the study.  The participants had agreed to be in the study, but they were deceived about the true nature of the study and were not told when the experiment had begun. This was necessary to avoid demand characteristics.