Psychology: Schema Theory

Results

- No significant difference between the way both groups recalled the story Patterns of Distortion 1) Assimilation: Story became more conventional/ consistent with the participant's own cultural exceptions (the details were consciously changed to fit British cultural norms) canoe = boat hunting seals = fishing 2) Leveling: The story became shorter (reduced to 180 words) - participants omitted what seemed as unimportant information 3) Sharpening - Tend to change the order of the story (using terms that are familiar to the participant's culture) 4) Added details and emotion

Conclusion

- Remembered the main themes, yet changed elements to match their cultural expectations - Remembering is an active process where information is change and retrieved to fit existing schemas - This is done to create meaning in the incoming information - Memory isn't like a photograph or video - people remember in terms of what makes sense to them

Role of Schema

1) Helps us predict what is expected based on what happened before 2) Used to organize our knowledge - guide behavior 3) Help us simplify the world around us and make sense of our experiences

What is a schema?

A mental representation that is derived from prior knowledge and experience

Procedure

British participants were told a Native American legend of The War of Ghosts, which is filled with unfamiliar terms, concepts and style. Participants were allocated into 2 conditions a) Repeated reproduction - Where a participant was told the story and then asked to reproduce it by writing until 6/7 reproductions have been made b) Serial production - Where participant A was told the story and shortly after was asked to reproduce it to participant B who was called to reproduce it to participant C. This chaining technique continues until 6/7 reproductions.

Bartlett (1932)

Experiment

Aim

Investigate the role of schema in recalling a story from an unfamiliar culture and whether it could lead to memory distortion

Schema in Cognitive Approach

a) Cognitive processes are affected by both social and cultural factors b) Bartlett first showed how cultural schema affected memory

Schema Theory

a) Concept was first proposed by Piaget (1926) b) He suggested that cognitive schemas can be seen as specific knowledge organized and stored in memory and can be used and accessed when needed Schema helps explain memory processes of; a) Encoding b) Storage c) Retrieval