Schema

Learning Outcome:

Evaluate schema theory with reference to

research studies
(AO2/AO3)

Structure of presentation: Introductory activities/experiments What is schema theory? Research studies & Evaluation points Evaluation of Schema Theory
There is a handout on topic

Introductory Activities
See next slide
http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=vJG698U2Mvo&feature=player_embedded #!

http://www.youtube.com/v/vJG698U2Mvo&feature=player_embedded#!

Introductory activity :

Introduction to Schema
How do we explain these results? To pass something into memory depends upon
organisation. Schemas are all about how we learn.

However, the process of learning first depends on What we attend to is influenced by our existing
schemas

what information we attend to (selective attention)

Lets do some tests

Test 1: Instructions
This is a simple memory test, your task
is to memorise as many words as possible. They will be presented on screen and read out.

You will then be asked to recall as many

as possible within 60 seconds.

First

Generally: Rate how confident are you in your memory?

0. Non
5. middle

10. Very

Set 1: Words next slide

sour honey bitter heat tooth

nice sugar chocolate taste tart

candy soda good cake pie

You now have 60 seconds to recall as many as possible

Do it again? Set 2 Words next slide

mad happy rage mean ire

wrath hate hatred fury emotion

fear fight temper calm enrage

You now have 60 seconds to recall as many as possible

Test 2: Instructions
Look at the following slide for 35 seconds When you see the word Now try and recall

as many objects as you can by writing them down

Now
Try and recall as many objects as you can by writing them down

Lets look at our results

Test 1: Results
Give your answers to someone else to mark. Set 1: score
How many words did you correctly recall?

Set 2: score
How many words did you correctly recall?

Then add up score for two sets = Total score

Set 1:
sour honey bitter heat tooth nice sugar chocolate taste tart candy soda good cake pie mad happy rage mean ire

Set 2:
wrath hate hatred fury fear fight temper calm

emotion enrage

Set One:
did anyone have the word Sweet?

Set Two:
did anyone have the word: Anger or Angry?

So what does it all mean?

Question: What does this kind of experiment tell us about our Memory?

Some answers: Something about the way the brain groups information Confidence in our memory has been shown to have nothing to do with accuracy our results?

Test 2: Answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Bricks Computer Notebooks Pencil case Files Skull Ringbinders Briefcase

9. Pliers 10. Floppy discs 11. Filofax 12. Pen holder 13. CD Rom 14. Chair 15. Filing cabinet

Results
Which objects did you recall best? What kind of schema, if any, were they in? Did you recall objects that were not in the office
schema?

If so, which ones? Can you suggest reasons for this?

Activity
1. Create a mind map about a concept of
your own choice. Organize it thematically around one theme. Then create a hierarchical mind map, going from the general topic to the specific. Which of the mind maps do you prefer? certain skills or events. Now create a schema for events that happen when you are visiting a restaurant.

2. Procedure schemas are schemas for

 What do we know so far? What is a schema?

Defining Schema
A schema is: a cluster of inter-related concepts that tell us about
how things function in the world. In other words, the representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas, and/or actions, which go together. organize and interpret information.

A schema is: a cognitive framework or concept that help us Schemas can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in
interpreting the vast amount of information that is available in our environment.

However, these mental frameworks also cause us to exclude

pertinent information to instead focus only on things that confirm our pre-existing beliefs and ideas. retain new information that does not conform to our established ideas about the world.

Schemas can contribute to stereotypes and make it difficult to

 Hierarchical Thematic Unprincipled, i.e. can be organized in infinite ways

Characteristics of schema
Consists of concepts that
are related to each other

Encodes general

knowledge that can be applied to many different situations consist of sub-schemata/ different levels be organized in infinite ways

Can be hierarchical, i.e. Is unprincipled, i.e. can

Hierarchical Schema

Thematic Schema
Ski down slope

Buy lift ticket

Drink hot chocolate

Going skiing

Go to mountains

Put on down jacket

In summary, what does schemas do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-A9SgbAK5I

They guide our behaviour They predict likely happenings They help us to make sense of current experiences They help us to adapt to changing environments They allow us to form expectations about
situations, the world and people

They simplify reality They organise our knowledge and assist recall

Introduction to Schema Theory

What is schema theory?

The term schema was
first used by Jean Piaget in 1926. (but there have been many with similar ideas before him) develop ideas from simple ideas into complex ones revised by relating experiences to each other

Explains how people

Schemas are formed and

Background
Zoologist more specifically, a genetic
epistemologist

He was dissatisfied with the idea that

Intelligence is fixed
Intelligence is best regarded as a process of biological
maturation and interaction with the world that adapts the child to its environment

Worked with Binet (who developed the IQ test)

Interested in the kinds of mistakes that children make
at different ages

Method:
Clinical interview, informal experiments, naturalistic
observations

Overview of Piagets Theory

Intellectual development occurs through active
interaction with the world
Increasing understanding only happens as the child actively interacts
with and discovers the world Children do not passively receive their knowledge they are curious and self-motivated

Intellectual development occurs as a process

Children think in qualitatively different ways from an adult We are not born with the information ready made but develop our
intelligence in stages

Individuals construct their understanding of the world

Through interaction, each individual has to build their own mental
framework for understanding and interacting with their environment

Video Introduction to Schema

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEam9lpa6TQ

The construction of schemas according to Jean Piaget

We try to understand a new or different
object or concept by using one of our preexisting schemas into existing schemas (a type of recognition, it provides us with comfort and security) schemas to fit the characteristics of a new object (learning)

During assimilation, we try to fit new objects During accommodation, we change our

Assimilation & Accommodation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQur-Y_BJY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-A9SgbAK5I

The formation of Schema

AO2: Evaluation of Schema Theory

Piagets theory made us aware of how knowledge
may be constructed in the mind through the development of schemas

Some have criticised his research because of the

type of tasks he gave children to perform this may suggest he underestimated the complexity of development and perhaps the rate at which children develop. Therefore his theory could as well be seen as overly simplistic, the influence of culture and gender is largely ignored. has inspired a huge amount of research studies (e.g. as follows).

Schema theory has been very influential and it

Other Research Studies

Bartlett (1932) The war of the ghosts Brewer and Treyen (1981) The office experiment Fantz (1961) the face recognition in infants (innate schemas) Bransford & Johnson (1973) Text comprehension

Ghosts

Bartlett (1932)
The war of the ghosts
This research is all about the
reconstructive nature of memory. Psychologists was one of the first to use the concept of a schema in 1932. memory stores meaningful information

Frederic Bartlett was a British

Aims: Investigate the way that

War of the Ghosts (1932) Methodology

Bartlett selected an unusual story (war of the ghosts)
for people from a Western culture to understand because it contained unfamiliar supernatural concepts and an odd, causal structure. much of the story as possible, specifically he used:
second person reads and recalls the second reproduction.and so on Repeated reproduction participant reads the story and repeats it over various recall intervals

After an interval participants were asked to recall as

Serial reproduction participant reads and recalls the story,

The War of the Ghosts

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dlvalenc/PSY307/LINKS/GHOSTWAR.HTM

One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and while they were it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war cries and they thought; 'Maybe this is a war-party.' They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of paddles and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe and they said; 'What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on the people.' One of the young men said; 'I have no arrows.' 'Arrows are in the canoe,' they said. 'I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not know where I have gone. But you,' he said, turning to the other, 'May go with them.' So one of the young men went, but the other returned home. And the warriors went on up the river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the water and began to fight, and many were killed. But presently, one of the young men heard one of the warriors say; 'Quick let us go home. That Indian has been hit.' Now he thought; 'Oh, they are ghosts.' He did not feel sick, but he had been shot. So the canoes went back to Egulac, and the young man went back to his house and made a fire. And he told everybody and said; 'Behold, I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were killed and many of those that attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, but I did not feel sick.' He told it all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose, he fell down. Something black came out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried. He was dead.

War of the Ghosts (1932)

Bartlett found that their accounts were
distorted in several ways that, generally, made them more consistent with a Western world view.

Specifically he found the following;

Findings/Results
Some things in the story were changed by the
participants, especially parts of the story that were difficult for the participant to comprehend (i.e. ghosts and the Indian's death). Ghosts coming out of the mouth of the unconscious Indian was commonly written. The excuse for not fighting "I have run out of arrows" was avoided and instead put down to "worried relatives", because it was more familiar to the participant.

Every participant rationalized the story to some

degree

Findings/Results
Some added material to the story to bring it into
closer agreement with their prior knowledge and beliefs (for example he had a fever before he died). arrows' excuse for joining the war. This was because many men were going off to war and relatives would miss him were in the forefront of the participants minds. memories in order to make the story more coherent. This often involved them down playing the things they did not understand, such as the supernatural elements: The participants were not reading back a copy of the story but reconstructing it from the main details held in their memory.

There was a tendency for males to forget the 'no

Bartlett found that participants tended to alter their

study
The ecological validity of the War of the Ghosts lab study
has been questioned.

Whilst Bartlett rejected the artificiality of traditional

stimulus such as nonsense syllables ( Ebbinghaus) and word lists to test memory, his use of a native American folk tale was " about as similar to normal prose as nonsense syllables are to words using "real - life" events experienced during their first week at university at various intervals of time ranging from 2 weeks to six months. throughout the time period, suggesting that schemainduced memory distortions may be less common in naturalistic conditions than in the laboratory.

Wynn & Logie (1998) did a similar study with students

They found that the initial accuracy of recall was sustained

Evaluation of Bartletts study

Furthermore Bartletts study wasn't a very well
controlled study. Bartlett did not give very specific instructions to his participants ( Barlett, 1932 " I thought it best, for the purposes of these experiments, to try to influence the subject's procedure as little as possible".) have been due to conscious guessing rather than schema-influenced memory

As a result, some distortions observed by Bartlett may

Gauld and Stephen (1967) found that the instructions

stressing the need for accurate recall eliminated almost half the errors usually obtained.

Brewer & Treyens (1981)

Individual participants were asked to wait in an
office. After 35 seconds, participants were taken to another room where they were asked to recall everything in the room in which they had been waiting. objects consistent with a typical office schema. with a typical office schema

People showed a strong tendency to recall

Few people remembered items inconsistent

Brewer & Treyen (1981) Office Experiment

We used the stimulus below Brewer and Treyen used a different method

Method:
Tested memory for
objects in an office that 30 participants had waited in individually. aware of the time of the procedure or that they were taking part in a study so their behaviour was natural.

Participants were not

Findings:
Brewer & Treyens found that participants
recalled the office things best

They also found that participants included

things that you would expect to find in an office but werent in this particular picture

Did we find this? Participants did not recall things that you would
not expect to find in an office such as the pliers and bricks Treyens suggested that this was because its weird.

However, they did recall the skull. Brewer and

Franz (1961) Face Recognition of infants

Franz (1961) Aims Method

The face recognition in infants (innate schemas)
Aim: To see whether face recognition was innate in infants Method/Procedure: Fantz set up a display board above the baby to which were attached two pictures. On one there was a bulls-eye and on the other was a sketch of the human face. Then, from behind the board, invisible to the baby, he peeked through a hole to watch what the baby looked at.

Franz (1961) Findings, Evaluation

Findings & conclusions: A two-month-old baby looked twice as much at the human face as it did at the bulls-eye. This is suggested that human babies have some powers of pattern and form selection. Evaluation Points:

Ground breaking study showing the innate nature of some

schemas.

Makes evolutionary sense face recognition aids survival and is

important for communication.

Supported by further research: Hunt (1993) found that at three

months we can tell the difference between the members of our family.

Bransford and Johnson (1972) The role of context in comprehension & recall

Bransford & Johnson (1972)

Participants presented with a passages like the
following and were then asked to rate them.

As an example,
Rate the comprehensibility of the following passage
(1-7)

Rate the comprehensibility of this passage (1-7)

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange items into different groups. Of course one pile might be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult tot foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then, one never can tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. The n they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.

Rate the comprehensibility of this passage (1-7) Washing Clothes:

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange items into different groups. Of course one pile might be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next step; otherwise, you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult tot foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then, one never can tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. The n they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.

Bransford & Johnson (1972)

They participants this paragraph:
If the balloons popped, the sound wouldnt be able to carry since everything would be too far away from the correct floor. A closed window would also prevent the sound from carrying, since most buildings tend to be well insulated. Since the whole operation depends on a steady flow of electricity, a break in the middle of the wire would also cause problems. Of course, the fellow could shout, but the human voice is not loud enough to carry that far. An additional problem is that a string could break on the instrument. Then there could be no accompaniment to the message. It is clear that the best situation would involve less distance. Then there would be fewer potential problems. With face to face contact, the least number of things could go wrong.

Method & Findings

Doesnt make much sense, does it? Some of the participants got just this paragraph,
and they didnt think it made much sense either. They also couldnt remember it very well.

Another group of participants saw this picture

before reading the paragraph

Suddenly the paragraph makes sense, right? This group of participants certainly thought so, Another group of participants saw the same
picture after reading the paragraph, and a fourth group saw only part of it before reading the paragraph, with enough missing to make it difficult to tell what the picture was about. Neither of these groups could make much sense of the paragraph, and they didnt remember much of it either. and they were able to remember it pretty well too.

Conclusions
In this experiment, you can think of the
picture as the schema. It serves to structure the information you get in the paragraph, and select what you remember about it.

Without that structure, you do not

having anything to pick what you should remember, so you do not remember much. you gave it to the participants before they read the paragraph is important, because it suggests that schemas are doing their work at encoding, that is, when youre storing the new

The fact that the picture only worked if

1. Schema: General Evaluation Points

There is a lot of research to support the idea that schemas
affect cognitive processes such as memory. This theory seems quite useful for understanding how people categorize information, interpret stories and make inferences. cognition develops in children (Piaget) and also how memories can become distorted. Furthermore, social psychologists often refer to 'social schemas when they are trying to explain stereotyping and prejudice.' differences, since different genders & cultures may have different schemas which influence the way they interpret the world.

Schema theory has also contributed to our understanding how

Schema theory helps to understand cultural and gender

2. Schema: General Evaluation Points

There are some methodological flaws with the research, for example,
Bartletts choice of material meant that the stories he chose may not have been meaningful to other people, but he had no objective measure of 'meaningfulness'. However, his initial findings have been supported by later research by Brewer and Treyens (1981) and Brandford and Johnson (1973) having low ecological validity.

It is an important to note that much of the research can be criticized for Cohen (1993) states that schema theory is rather vague and the theory
fails to offer detailed explanations of how the schemas are acquired in the first place. Cohen believes the theory is overly simplistic (reductionist) and does not account for complexity of human cognition.

However, recent biological research by Caramazza (2009) found that from

the visual cortex, information about living and non-living objects are shuttled to different parts of the brain as to trigger appropriate reactions even in blind participantsso some schemas appear to be connected to localized areas of the brain.

References & Extension Work

Please see handout.

Extension work: Schema Theory and Comprehension in Reading