User:Hannahchaise/Schema (psychology)

Response to Peer Reviews:

I appreciated all of the positive and constructive feedback from my peers!

Snqadri: Thank you for your feedback. My citations are outdated in some parts, with others I have not added yet. I will double check with Dr. Rahn to see if a 2013 source can be used!

Mksearcy: Thank you for your outlook on re-wording about Jean Piaget. I have edited and re-worded this sentence!

Emiell490: I agree that there were too many parentheses under "schematic processing." I have struck through some of these that are irrelevant to the article.

Sfatima 12: Thank you for your idea of brainstorming my ideas on what information I'm presenting in my final draft. It can be overwhelming to tackle the entire article at once! I am looking for more secondary citations now.

Aford4706: Thank you for your ideas on Jean Piaget and addinging him into the background research. I also loved your idea of including marginalized identities, and how these communities can be affected by schemas. It seems that there is not a lot of scholarly information on this topic, but I will keep looking!

History

The concept was popularized first-written described in psychology and education through the works of the British psychologist Frederic Bartlett, who drew on the term body schema used by neurologist Henry Head in 1932. In 1952, it was then popularized by Jean Piaget, who was credited with the first cognitive development theory of schemas. In 1952, Jean Piaget, who was credited with the first cognitive development theory of schemas, popularized this ideology. By 1977, it was expanded into schema theory by educational psychologist Richard C. Anderson. Since then, other terms have been used to describe schema such as "frame", "scene", and "script".

Early developments of the idea in psychology emerged with the gestalt psychologists (founded originally by Max Wertheimer) and Jean Piaget.: the The term schéma was originally introduced by Piaget in 1923. In Piaget's later publications, action (operative or procedural) schémes were distinguished from figurative (representational) schémas, although together they may be considered a schematic duality. In subsequent discussions of Piaget in English, schema was often a mistranslation of Piaget's original French schéme. The distinction has been of particular importance in theories of embodied cognition and ecological psychology.

Schematic processing

Through the use of schemata, a heuristic technique to encode and retrieve memories, the majority of typical situations do not require much strenuous processing. People can quickly organize new perceptions into schemata and act without effort. The process however, is not always accurate, and people may develop illusory correlations, which is the tendency to form inaccurate or overestimated unfounded associations between categories, especially when the information is distinctive and idiosyncratic.

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), 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.) Furthermore, it has also been seen to affect the formation of episodic memory in humans. For instance, one is more likely to remember a pencil case in an office than a skull, even if both were present in the office, when tested on certain recall conditions. (Needs citation for this, will look and see if I can find. If not, will delete.)

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, priming and emotion. Through different factors such as current activation, accessibility, priming, and emotion, a specific schema can be selected.

Accessibility is how easily a schema can come comes to mind, and is determined by personal experience and expertise. This can be used as a cognitive shortcut ; , meaning it allows the most common explanation to be chosen for new information.

With priming, (addition on what priming is) 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.

Background research

Frederic Bartlett

The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Frederic Bartlett. By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then while subsequently 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: