Schema theory Flashcards
what are schemas
a schema is a cognitive structure which provides a framework for organizing information about the world, events, peopla and actions. They are mental representations that organize our knowledge belies and expectations. People develop schemas form a very early age from their own and other cultures and can be refined throughout our lives.
Various schemas
- role schemas help people understand the social context with which he or she is engaged amnd adjust accordingly to the demands of the situation.
- Social schemas: not only do we develop expectations about other people based on the social role they occupy, we develop expectations about their behaviour based on their personality traits
- Self-schemas: we have expectations about how we should act in different situations
- event schemas: Are based on our associations with how events ‘should’ play out based on our previous experiences with event we perceive s similar
- object schemas: informs one’s understanding of what various objects are, how they should function and what once can expect from them.
how do schemas affect memory
at all stages: encoding, storage and retrieval they influence what we pay attention to and impact hpw quickly people remember. They influence memory in many ways one of which is that people tend to remember the meaning of something but not the actual wording.
what do the schemas cause
reconstructive memory as we have stored knowledge to make sense of incoming information but our schemas can change how we interopret them. When looking at new information that does not fit with existing schemas, people soemtimes distort or alter the new information to make it fit with what they already know.
