Schema Theory

  • Schemas are stable, deeply rooted mental representations that shape our beliefs, values, and expectations.
  • Schemas are formed from prior experiences.

Types of Schemas

There are three types of schemas.

  • Social schemas are mental representations of groups of people, creating the foundation for stereotypes.

  • Scripts are mental representations of a sequence of events and self-schemas are schemas about ourselves.

  • However, these schemas and their influence on behavior can not be studied directly. Therefore, they are explored through their effects on more observable processes, such as memory.

  • Schemas can influence memory at all levels, including encoding, storage, and retrieval.

  • Encoding is a process of memory that involves the transfer of information from sensory organs to internal mental structures, such as LTM.

  • Retrieval is a process of memory that involves extracting information from the LTM when needed.

  • Anderson and Pichert investigated the influence of schemas on retrieval in their study.

    Anderson and Pichert Study

  • The study aimed to @@investigate the influence of schema on the retrieval of information from long-term memory@@.

  • An experiment was conducted with the following steps

    • Participants were assigned either a homebuyer or a burglar perspective.
    • They were then asked to read a text passage about a house where two boys were staying to skip school. The passage contained a total of 73 ideas, some of them being potentially interesting to a burglar and some to a real estate agent.
    • Participants were given a filler task, then asked to reproduce the story in writing as accurately as possible.
    • Participants were given another filler task, then some were required to change the initial perspective (from a homebuyer to a burglar or vice versa). Other participants kept the initial perspective.
    • Participants had to reproduce the story one more time, without reading it again.

Results

  • For the first recall, participants who had the burglar perspective recalled more burglar-relevant information, and participants who had the homebuyer perspective recalled more homebuyer-relevant information.
  • Participants who changed perspective recalled more information (an additional 7.1%) important to the second perspective but unimportant to the first. Note that they did not read the passage for the second time, so before the change of perspective this additional information had been encoded but had not been retrieved. Change of perspective influenced retrieval, not encoding.

Conclusion

Perspective in this situation is a type of schema. The study supports the idea that schemas influence the process of retrieval of already stored information from memory.