schemas Flashcards
what year was bartlett
1932
what was the aim of bartlett
to find if the memory of a story is affected by prior knowledge. Specifically, if cultural background or unfamiliarity with the text would distort memory when the story was recalled
What was the procedure for bartlett
he used serial reproduction which is a technique where participants are shown an image or told a story and have to reproduce what they can recall a short amount of time after. He told participants a native american legend called The War of the Ghosts. The participants were British. This story was completely new to them the way it was structured, the names, and the concepts. they were asked to recall it
What were the results of Bartlett
the participants distorted the story as they tried to remember it in three different ways:
Assimilation: the story they fit to unconsciously fit the norms of British culture so they assimilated the story to their own culture and schema
Leveling: The story became shorter each time they told it as they started leaving out little details they didn’t find important.
Sharpening: the participants changes the order of the story to make more sense to use the terms they were already familiar with first
What are the negatives to the Bartlett study
- It is weakly controlled as an experiment they didn’t fully control the variables they didn’t control when the DV was repeated (the recall of the story) they did it randomly whenever they stopped by the researcher’s office they didn’t have set times to retell the story
- There wasn’t very clear standard instructions
- Because they were all british you can’t generalize it to the wider population/cultural bias
- Maybe they were just having a bad day and couldn’t remember
Did bartlett have ecological validity
The study was performed in a lab which can be criticized for lack of ecological validity but it does have high mundane realism (its likely to happen because in our day to day life we would hear new stories all the time and we are often asked to repeat things)
what year was Brewer and Treyens
1981
how many subjects in Brewer and treyens and how many objects
30 participants uni students and 61 objects in an office
whatt was the aim of brewer and treyens
To see how schemas affected memeory in everyday life situations
Procedure of brewer and tryens
There were 61 objects in the room set up in an office
Some items were consistent with ones schema of an office, some were very random
After having been in the room they had an unexpected recall test. Some were asked to draw, some write down what they remebered, some write down and recall from a possible list of answers.
Results of brewer and treyens
They found that they were more likely to recall more typical office items (high schema expectancy), They were also likely to recall abnormally strange things like the skull because it just stuck out
They found strongly that people recalled office items that hadn’t even been in the office because they were relating it to their schema of an office and assumed it would be in there
Participants used their office schema to ensure rapid encoding and at retrieval recall was influenced by that schema
What does brewer and treyens say about schemas
shows shcema theory because
Information about the office items was encoded in the memory system using each individuals office schema stored in the mediation phase in that schema then the items were retrieved from that schema so it shows the process of information/memory processing
Evaluation of brewer and treyens (strengths)
- variety - the study used several different recall methods increasing its robustness on how schema theory works and its affect on memory.
- high practical applications
Evaluation of brewer and treyens (weaknesses)
low ecological validity - the artificial lab setting doesn’t reflect how things would work in a real-life setting
- low generalizability - the participants were uni students which is a very set group of people. And the schema of an office may vary across cultures.
- demand characteristics - its not hard to guess the aim of the study and they could have altered there responses accordingly
Bransford and johnson year
1973
aim of Bransford and johnson
Aim was to look at the role of the context that activates a schema in improving comprehension and recall
procedure of bransford and johnson
They constructed some reading passages that would be hard to grasp out of context
They compared the recall performance between different groups that were given context (like a picture) and groups who had not received that context
Results from Bransford and Johnson
The people who gto context were able to recall much better than those without context
Evaluation of Bransford and johnson (stregnths)
- practical application
- reliable - the standardized procedure allows for it to be easily replicated, and it has been replicated, and similar results have been found.
Eval of Brasnford and Johnson (weaknesses)
Cultural differences - schemas can vary across cultures
- low ecological validity - listening to a passage about an unfamiliar situation may not reflect real-world memory use.
- Artificial stimuli - the passage intentionally was vague and hard to understand which may not accurately represent how people process everyday info.
information process model
input mediation output
what are cognitive processes
dreaming, memory, decision making
what is a schema
A schema is defined as a cluster of interrelated concepts that tell us about how things function in the world, a framework to help organise and interpret information
Assimilation
tsking new info or taking any information and interpreting it in those new experiences into your existing schema (i go to my new school im used to wearing black leather shoes and a dress no shorter than my knees etc then i come to isb see the uniform and that new information of what a uniform might look like i simulate it into my existing schema and decide that’s not proper uniform its more normal clothes.)
