Schema Theory (DP IB Psychology): Revision Note

Schema theory

• A schema is a mental representation of something

  • E.g., a schema for concrete, tangible things such as ‘cat’, ‘house’, ‘mother’ or for abstract ideas/concepts such as ‘freedom’, ‘jealousy’, ‘love’

• A schema holds all of the information that an individual has assimilated over the course of their life so far, obtained via direct personal experience

  • E.g., watching a TV series about school life or via contact with others

  • parents telling you about their experience of school

• There are frame schemas which include the details and characteristics of an item or person or object

  • E.g., ‘cat’, ‘house’, ‘mother’

• There are script schemas which include the sequences and expectations as to what will be involved in an event or experience

  • E.g., going to school involves taking the bus, chatting with friends at break, being in lessons, hearing the bell sound, being set homework, etc.

• A schema can be adapted according to experience

  • E.g., if you meet someone who has been home-schooled, then your ‘school’ schema will accommodate this new information (that some people don’t actually go to a school but instead learn at home)

• A person’s schemas are not right or wrong; they are simply the product of assimilation and thus are subjective

  • People’s schemas may overlap but they will not be identical as each schema is built on individual experience

The effect of schema on memory

• When you experience an event either directly or indirectly it is usual for schematic activation to guide your understanding/expectation of that event

• While useful for processing information quickly, schemas can also distort memory by filling in gaps with what we expect rather than what actually happened

  • E.g., you attend a lecture and later recall that the lecturer used a projector. In reality, they only spoke without slides — but because lectures often involve projectors, your schema for “lecture” may have distorted your memory

• The problem with having set and pre-determined schemas is that they can interfere with accurate recall

  • This happens when someone recalls an event not as it truly happened but as a result of schematic interference

    • Their schemas ‘got in the way’ of 100% accurate recall of the event (generally people are unaware of this happening)

• Schemas may lead to biased recall

  • E.g., you are in a pub and there is a fight. the police ask you what you witnessed and you say that one man was bleeding but in fact this is not true

    • Your schema for ‘fight’ added blood at the scene because it fits your schema for ‘fight’

• Cultural schemas may lead to incorrect and faulty recall of material which does not align with or fit into a person’s schema based on their own culture, as the following study demonstrates:

Research support for schema theory

Bartlett (1932)

Aim:

• To investigate the effect of cultural schemas on recall of a culturally unfamiliar story

Participants:

• 20 male students from the University of Cambridge in the UK

Procedure:

• Bartlett instigated a procedure known as serial reproduction

  • One participant read a Native American folk story called 'The War of the Ghosts'

  • This participant then reproduced the story in writing

  • This version of the story was then read to a second person

  • The second person then wrote his own version of the story

  • This version was then read to a third person

  • This third person then produced his own version of the story and so on

Results:

• Bartlett found that the resulting stories bore little similarity to the original Native American folk tale. The changes made by the participants included:

  • Omission

    • Key details were ignored or dropped, especially unfamiliar or unpleasant ones, e.g.,

      • contorted face” or “black coming out of a mouth” were omitted

      • the central theme of ghosts fighting was often dropped, even though it was the story’s title

    • Omission reflected how some details did not fit with participants’ schemas (e.g., adult male views of war)

  • Assimilation and sharpening

    • Story details were changed to suit the participants’ own cultural schemas e.g.,

      • ‘canoes’ became ‘boats'

      • ‘paddling’ became ‘rowing’

      • a spirit wound was re-interpreted as a flesh wound

    • Participants added words such as ‘therefore’ and ‘because’ to make sense of events

  • Levelling

    • The story became shorter and simpler

    • The original text was approximately 350 words but the participants’ version was around 180 words

Conclusion:

• Cultural schemas contribute to the reconstructive nature of memory

• Memory is an active process in which pre-existing information and expectations may interfere with the accuracy and reliability of the memory

Evaluation of schema theory

Strengths

• Bartlett’s study was one of the first pieces of research to highlight the role of schema in reconstructive memory

  • E.g., two people who witness the same event may give very different accounts of what they have seen

• Bartlett’s procedure (serial reproduction) is replicable, which means that it could be repeated to check for reliability

Limitations

• Bartlett’s sample was small and limited to an elite demographic of university students who were all male, which makes the findings difficult to generalise

• Schemas are not easy to measure, as they are subjective and unique to the individual

Link to concepts

Change

• This is very dated research, conducted in the 1930s using a biased sample of students from an elite university (which, at the time, accepted very few female students and few students from cultures other than the UK)

• University students in the UK are much more aware of wider multi-cultural issues and influences today than they were in the 1930s

  • There is awareness and understanding of indigenous cultures; ideas such as using a canoe or hunting seals are not alien concepts

  • The lack of relevance to a 21st-century mindset means that the results lack temporal validity

Perspective

• Schemas feature in several branches of psychology and can explain the ways in which people may process information

  • E.g., depressed people are described as having a negative self-schema (see this (opens in a new tab) revision note for more information on negative self-schemas and major depressive disorder)