Brewer and Treyens

Method

Participants individually were asked to wait in an office containing objects, some of which did not conform to the typical representation of an office. After waiting around a minute they were taken into another office and asked to write down every object they could remember from the previous room.

Findings

Participants recalled the schematic objects (desk and chair), however many tended to recall schematic objects which weren't present. Furthermore, participants also recalled the objects which did not fit in with their office schema such as the skull.

Evaluation

The study supports the schema theory, the way in which it describes information to be stored and later used to interpret events and environments. Nonetheless, it didn't count for the unusual objects which did not fit with the participants' schema were recalled better than predicted by schema theory.

Aim

To investigate whether peoples' memory on objects in certain settings were influenced by existing schemas.

Relevance to qs in CLOA

schema, effect of social and cultural factors on a cognitive processes, reliability of memory