Brewer & Treyens (1981)-schema theory

Procedure and results

The aim of the study was to investigate the role of schema in encoding and retrieval of episodic memory. The basic assumption of
schema theory is that individuals' prior experience will influence how they remember new information.

The sample was made up of 86 university psychology students. Participants were seated in a room that was made to look like an
office. The room consisted of objects that were typical of offices: a typewriter, paper and a coffee pot. There was also a table with
tools and electronics. There were shelves along one wall and then the other walls were decorated with posters and a
calendar. There were some items in the room that one would not typically find in an office - for example, a skull or a toy top. Finally,
there were items that were omitted - such as books.

Each participant was asked to wait in the professor's office while the researcher "checked to make sure that the previous participant
had completed the experiment." The participant did not realize that the study had already begun. The participants were asked to
have a seat. All of the chairs except for one had objects on them. In this way, it was guaranteed that all participants would have the
same vantage point in the office. The researcher left the room and said that he would return shortly.

After 35 seconds the participants were called into another room and then asked what they remembered from the office. When they
finished the experiment, they were given a questionnaire. The important question was "Did you think that you would be asked to
remember the objects in the room. 93% said "no."

30 participants carried out written recall and then verbal recognition; 29 participants carried out drawing recall; 27 carried out verbal
recognition only.

The recall condition: Participants were asked to write down a description of as objects as they could remember from the office.
They were also asked to state the location, shape, size and colour of the objects. They were asked to "Write your description as if
you were describing the room for someone who had never seen it." After this, they were given a verbal recognition test in which they
were given a booklet containing a list of objects. They were asked to rate each item for how sure they were that the object was in
the room. "1" meant that they were sure it was not in the room; "6" meant that they were absolutely sure it was in the room. The
questionnaire consisted of 131 objects: 61 were in the room; 70 were not.

The drawing condition: In this condition, participants were given an outline of the room and asked to draw in the objects they could
remember.

The verbal recognition condition: In this condition, the participants were read a list of objects and simply asked whether they
were in the room or not.

They found that when the participants were asked to recall either by writing a paragraph or by drawing, they were more likely to
remember items in the office that were congruent with their schema of an office - that is, the "expected items" were more often
recalled. The items that were incongruent with their schema of an office - e.g. the skull, a piece of bark or the screwdriver - were not
often recalled. When asked to select items on the list, they were more likely to identify the incongruent items; for example, they
didn't remember the skull when doing the free recall, but gave it a 6 on the verbal recognition task. However, they also had a higher
rate of identifying objects which were schema congruent but not in the room.

In both the drawing and the recall condition, they also tended to change the nature of the objects to match their schema. For
example, the pad of yellow paper that was on a chair was remembered as being on the desk. The trapezoidal work table was
recalled as square.

It appears that schema played a role in both the encoding and recall of the objects in the office.
Evaluation
In the written recall condition, the average number of correct objects recalled was 13.5. The average number of "inferred" objects
recalled was 1.13. The objects that were remembered that were not in the room were books (by 9/30), a filing cabinet (3/30), pens
(1/30), a coffee cup (2/30), a telephone (1/30), a lamp (1/30) and curtains (1/30). The results do not indicate a high number of errors
and does not explain why some recalled these objects yet others did not.

The research produced both quantitative and qualitative data in order to provide a richer understanding of the role of schema.

There is no way to verify the schema of the participants prior to the experiment, but the researchers did a pilot study by using a
questionnaire with students to determine schema consistent objects.

There are ethical concerns about the deception used in the study. The participants had agreed to be in the study, but they were
deceived about the true nature of the study and were not told when the experiment had actually begun. This was necessary to avoid
demand characteristics.

Research: Atler & Oppenheimer, 2007 sys 1

Aim: Investigate how font affects thinking
Procedure
 40 Princeton students completed the Cognitive Reflections Test (CRT). This test is made up of 3 questions, and measures whether people use
fast thinking to answer the question (and get it wrong) or use slow thinking (and get it right) Half the students were given the CRT in an easy-to-
read font, while the other half were given the CRT in a difficult-to-read font
Findings
Among students given the CRT in easy font, only 10% of participants answered all three questions correctly, while among the students given the
CRT in difficult font, 65% of participants were fully correct
Conclusion
 When a question is written in a difficult-to-read font, this causes participants to slow down, and engage in more deliberate, effortful System 2
thinking, resulting in answering the question correctly On the other hand, when the question is written in an easy-to-read font, participants use
quick, unconscious and automatic System 1 thinking to come up with the obvious (but incorrect) answer
Evaluation
 This study provides strong evidence for dual processing theory, providing support for Kahneman's model of fast System 1 and slow System 2
thinking
 The study only involved Princeton undergraduate students, which are clearly not representative of the general population. Therefore, the results
may not generalize to other groups of participants
 The CRT is made up of "trick" questions, which rarely come up in everyday life. Therefore, the ecological validity of this study is low, as the
real-world significance of these findings is unclear