ib pysch cognitive exam: schema theory

short answer question

what are schemas?

mental maps created to organize knowledge, beliefs and expectations.

what do schemas regulate?

behavior

what are schemas resistant to?

resistant to change

who introduced schema theory?

Frederick Bartlett in 1932

where do schemas come from?

prior experiences

what effect do schemas have?

they influence how information is retrieved or encoded

why can their influence on encoding problematic?

schemas can potentially influence memory, because it is an active process that is subject to change

what do schemas often rely on?

heuristics

what are heuristics

shortcuts for thinking to save energy but that can be inaccurate

what are the two types of information processing

top down and bottom up

what is top down processing?

when schemas act as a lens for perceived information

what is bottom up processing?

not based on prior experiences or influenced by pre-existing schemas

what are the three types of schemas?

social schemas, scripts, and self-schemas.

what is a social schema?

mental representations to describe groups of people, also known as stereotypes

what are scripts?

schema that describes actions, used as a way to perform repetitive tasks that don’t require a lot of mental effort.

what are self-schemas?

mental representation people hold for themselves

what study supports the existence of schemas?

Bransford and Johnson (1972)

what is the aim of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

to investigate the effect of context on the comprehension of passages

method of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

independent measures design, true lab experiment

participants in Bransford and Johnson (1972)

college students split into five groups

what was group one of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

no context

what was group two of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

no context, listened twice

what was the third group of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

context before the passage

what was the fourth group of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

context after the passage

what was the fifth group of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

partial context before, an incomplete photo

procedure of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

listened the a recording with fourteen units of information and given seven minutes after for free recall

results of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

group three remembered an average of eight units, which was significantly more than the other groups

conclusion of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

the context before allowed participants to create a mental representation, which more effectively encodes info into long term memory

strengths of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

the recording was standardized, which decreases bias and increases validity and accuracy

limitations of Bransford and Johnson (1972)

there was no filler task to prevent rehearsal, which decreases the validity.

what does the study demonstrate?

how schema has a large impact on memory