A schema (pl. schemata or schemas), in psychology and cognitive science, describes any of several concepts including:
A schema for oneself is called a "self schema". Schemata for other people are called "person schemata". Schemata for roles or occupations are called "role schemata", and schemata for events or situations are called "event schemata" (or scripts).
Schemata influence our attention, as we are more likely to notice things that fit into our schema. If something contradicts our schema, it may be encoded or interpreted as an exception or as unique. Thus, schemata are prone to distortion. They influence what we look for in a situation. They have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. We are inclined to place people who do not fit our schema in a "special" or "different" category, rather than to consider the possibility that our schema may be faulty. As a result of schemata, we might act in such a way that actually causes our expectations to come true.
The concept of schemata was initially introduced into psychology and education through the work of the British psychologist, Frederic Bartlett (1886–1969).[1] This learning theory views organized knowledge as an elaborate network of abstract mental structures that represent one's understanding of the world. Schema theory was developed by the educational psychologist R. C. Anderson. The term schema was used by Jean Piaget in 1926, so it was not an entirely new concept. Anderson, however, expanded the meaning.[2]
People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include Rubric (academic), social schemas, stereotypes, social roles, scripts, worldviews, and archetypes. In Piaget's theory of development, children adopt a series of schemata to understand the world.
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Early developments of the idea in psychology emerged with the Gestalt psychologists and Piaget. However, it is with the work of Bartlett[1] (himself drawing on the term as used by the neurologist Henry Head) that the term came to be used in its modern sense. Bartlett's work was neglected in America during the behaviouristic era until its wholesale recapitulation in Ulric Neisser's massively influential Cognitive Psychology (1967).[3] Neisser's work led to the ubiquity of the term in psychology, and its extension to other disciplines, notably the cognitive and computational sciences. Since that time, many other terms have been used as well, including "frame", "scene", and "script".
Schemata are an effective tool for understanding the world. Through the use of schemata, most everyday situations do not require effortful processing—automatic processing is all that is required. People can quickly organize new perceptions into schemata and act effectively without effort. For example, most people have a stairway schema and can apply it to climb staircases they've never seen before.
However, schemata can influence and hamper the uptake of new information (proactive interference), such as when existing stereotypes, giving rise to limited or biased discourses and expectations (prejudices), may lead an individual to "see" or "remember" something that has not happened because it is more believable in terms of his/her schema. For example, if a well-dressed businessman draws a knife on a vagrant, the schemata of onlookers may (and often do) lead them to "remember" the vagrant pulling the knife. Such distortion of memory has been demonstrated. (See Background research below.)
Schemata are interrelated and multiple conflicting schemata can be applied to the same information. Schemata are generally thought to have a level of activation, which can spread among related schemata. Which schema is selected can depend on factors such as current activation, accessibility, and priming.
Accessibility is how easily a schema comes to mind, and is determined by personal experience and expertise. This can be used as a cognitive shortcut; it allows the most common explanation to be chosen for new information.
With priming, a brief imperceptible stimulus temporarily provides enough activation to a schema so that it is used for subsequent ambiguous information. Although this may suggest the possibility of subliminal messages, the effect of priming is so fleeting that it is difficult to detect outside laboratory conditions. Furthermore, the mere exposure effect —which requires consciousness of the stimuli— is far more effective than priming.
Sufferers of Korsakov's syndrome are unable to form new memories, and must approach every situation as if they had just seen it for the first time. Many sufferers adapt by continually forcing their world into barely-applicable schemata, often to the point of incoherence and self-contradiction.
The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Bartlett (1932). By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information (stories, etc.), Bartlett was able to establish that individuals' existing schemata and stereotypes influence not only how they interpret "schema-foreign" new information but also how they recall the information over time. One of his most famous investigations involved asking participants to read a Native American folk tale, "The War of the Ghosts", and recall it several times up to a year later. All the participants transformed the details of the story in such a way that it reflected their cultural norms and expectations, i.e. in line with their schemata. The factors that influenced their recall were:
Bartlett's work was crucially important in demonstrating that long-term memories are neither fixed nor immutable but are constantly being adjusted as our schemata evolve with experience. In a sense it supports the existentialist view that we construct our past and present in a constant process of narrative/discursive adjustment, and that much of what we "remember" is actually confabulated (adjusted and rationalized) narrative that allows us to think of our past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of our memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable to our conscious memory at any given time.
An important step in the development of schema theory was taken by the work of D.E. Rumelhart describing our understanding of narrative and stories.[4] See also J. M. Mandler[5] Further work on the concept of schemata was conducted by Brewer and Treyens (1981)[6] who demonstrated that the schema-driven expectation of the presence of an object was sometimes sufficient to trigger its erroneous recollection. An experiment was conducted where participants were requested to wait in a room identified as an academic's study and were later asked about the room's contents. A number of the participants recalled having seen books in the study whereas none were present. Brewer and Treyens concluded that the participants' expectations that books are present in academics' studies were enough to prevent their accurate recollection of the scenes.
New information that falls within an individual's schema is easily remembered and incorporated into their worldview. However, when new information is perceived that does not fit a schema, many things can happen. The most common reaction is to simply ignore or quickly forget the new information. This can happen on a deep level— frequently an individual does not become conscious of or even perceive the new information. People may also interpret the new information in a way that minimises how much they must change their schemas. For example, Bob thinks that chickens don't lay eggs. He then sees a chicken laying an egg. Instead of changing the part of his schema that says 'chickens don't lay eggs', he is likely to adopt the belief that the animal in question that he has just seen laying an egg is not a real chicken. This is an example of 'disconfirmation bias', the tendency to set higher standards for evidence that contradicts one's expectations. [7] However, when the new information cannot be ignored, existing schemata must be changed.
Assimilation is the reuse of schemata to fit the new information. For example, when an unfamiliar dog is seen, a person will probably just assimilate it into their dog schema. However, if the dog behaves strangely, and in ways that don't seem dog-like, there will be accommodation as a new schema is formed for that particular dog.
Schemata about oneself are considered to be grounded in the present and based on past experiences. Memories, as mentioned, are framed in the light of one's self-conception. For example, people who have positive self-schemas (i.e. most people) selectively attend to flattering information and selectively ignore unflattering information, with the consequence that flattering information is subject to deeper encoding, and therefore superior recall <ref(Sedikides, C., & Green J. D. (2000). On the self-protective nature of inconsistency/negativity management: Using the person memory paradigm to examine self-referent memory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 906-92.)</ref>. Even when encoding is equally strong for positive and negative feedback, positive feedback is more likely to be recalled <ref(Sanitioso, R., Kunda, Z., & Fong, G. T. (1990). Motivated recruitment of autobiographical memories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 229-41.)</ref>. Moreover, memories may even be distorted to become more favourable-people typically remember exam grades as having been better than they actually were <ref(Bahrick, Harry P, Lynda K Hall, and Stephanie A Berger. 1996. Accuracy and Distortion in Memory for High School Grades. Psychological Science 7, no. 5: 265-271.)</ref>. However, when people have negative self views, memories are generally biased in ways that validate the negative self-schema; People with low self-esteem, for instance, are prone to remember more negative information about themselves than positive information <ref(Story, A. L. (1998). Self-esteem and memory for favorable and unfavorable personality feedback. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24: 51-64.)</ref>. Thus, memory tends to be biased in a way that validates the agent's pre-existing self-schema.
There are three major implications of self-schemata. First, information about oneself is processed faster and more efficiently, especially consistent information. Second, one retrieves and remembers information that is relevant to one's self-schema. Third, one will tend to resist information in the environment that is contradictory to one's self-schema. For inatance, students with a particular self-schema prefer roommates whose view of them is consistent with that schema. Students who end up with roommates whose view of them is inconsistent with their self-schema are more likely to try to find a new roommate, even if this view is positive (Swann, W. B., Jr. & Pelham, B. W. (2002). Who wants out when the going gets good? Psychological investment and preference for self-verifying college roommates. Journal of Self and Identity, 1, 219-233.) This is an example of self-verification.
Schema therapy was founded by Dr Jeffrey Young, and represents a development of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) specifically for treating personality disorders .[8][9] The therapy blends CBT with elements of Gestalt, object relations, constructivist and psychoanalytical therapies in order to treat the characterological difficulties which both constitute personality disorders and which underlie many of the chronic depressive or anxiety-involving symptoms which present in the clinic. CBT, Young felt, may be an effective treatment for presenting symptoms, but without the conceptual or clinical resources for tackling the underlying structures (maladaptive schemas) which consistently organise the patient's experience, the patient is likely to lapse back into unhelpful modes of relating to others and attempting to meet their needs. Early Maladaptive Schemas are described by Young as: broad and pervasive themes or patterns; made up of memories, feelings, sensations, and thoughts; regarding oneself and one's relationships with others; developing during childhood or adolescence; elaborated throughout life; and dysfunctional in that they lead to self-defeating behaviour. Examples include schemas of abandonment/instability, mistrust/abuse, emotional deprivation, and defectiveness/shame.[10]