Schema Theory and Theories of Cognitive Processes

Authors Avatar by ktzyue (student)

Evaluate schema theory with reference to research studies

  A schema is a cognitive structure that provides a framework for organizing information about the world, events, people and actions. According to the British psychologist Ferderic Bartlett, he defines schema in short as a mental representation of knowledge. There are multiple types of schemas: scripts that are schemas that provide information about the sequence of events; self-schemas that organize information we have about ourselves and social schemas that represent information about groups of people, which is known as stereotypes.

  However, what goes into each particular schema is largely dependent on every individual’s cultural. Bartlett has also suggested that memory is not like a tape recorder, but rather that people remember in terms of meaning and what makes sense to them. Therefore, people tend to have problem remembering a story from another culture, and that they would reconstruct the story to fit in with their own cultural schemas. If they story doesn’t make sense, the brain fills in the blanks based on existing schemas, or it simply invents something that seems to fit in, which can result in mistakes – called distortion.

  An experiment study was carried out, to study the effect of schemas on memory by Bartlett, in 1932. Twenty English participants were asked to read “The War of the Ghosts”, a Native American folk tale, and recall the story. The result was that each time the participants were asked to recall the story, it got shorted. After 6 times of reproducing the story, it had been reduced from 330 words to 180. Not only had the participants made the story shorter, but had also added their own interpretation of certain aspects unimportant or incoherent in a typical, western story. It shows that memory recall is influenced by our pre-existing knowledge, or our schema, which is influenced by our cultural background.

Join now!

  Then again, lots of researchers have supported the idea that schemas affect cognitive processes, such as memory. The theory seems quite useful for understanding how people categorize information, interpret stories, and make inferences, among other things. Schema theory has contributed to an understanding of memory distortions as well as social cognition. However, the theory is not clear about how schemas are acquired in the first place, how they actually influence cognitive processes and that the concept of schemas is too vague to be useful.

Evaluate two models ...

This is a preview of the whole essay