Brewer and Treyens

procedure

Brewer and Treyens collected a sample of 86 psychology students and asked them to sit in a room that had been made to look like an office. In the room were objects familiar to a typical office setting, such as a typewriter, paper, electronics, a calendar and shelves. There were some items that were incongruent to the schema of an office, such as a skull or a toy. As well as that, several objects congruent to the office schema were notably omitted, such as books. Each of the participants was asked to wait in the professor's office while the researcher 'checked to make sure that the previous participant had completed the experiment.' participants were seated there for 35 seconds and then called into another room and then asked what they remembered from the office. When they finished the experiment, they were given a questionnaire, with an important question asking 'Did you think you would be asked to remember the objects in the room.' 93% said 'no' which meant that the deception had been successful. There were 3 methods by which their memory was assessed, making the study an independent groups design: 30 participants carried out the recall condition, where they were asked to write down a description of the objects they could remember. 29 participants carried out the drawing condition where they were given an outline of the room and asked to draw in the objects they could remember. Finally 27 carried out the verbal recognition where they read a list of objects and simply asked whether they were in the room or not.

ethical issues (deception) of a study about schema theory

Deception is the act of misleading or wrongly informing a participant about the true nature and intentions of a piece of research they are taking part in. It is though as unethical as it undermines the use of informed consent, violating the trust between participant and researcher, as they are in a position of authority, making for an unethical misuse of power over what the participant knows and what their data is actually being used for. As well as that, it increases the likelihood of the participant withdrawing the results, therefore making much of the data collected obsolete. deception must often be used in psychological research, and especially cognitive research, so as to avoid demand characteristics justifiable deception must be paired with a debriefing at the end of the study in which researchers explain to participants the true aim of the study and the necessity of the use of deception so as to avoid participant harm Through the use of deception, the researchers were therefore able to conclude that the schema of an office shifted the participants ability to recall objects by drawing more attention to the expected objects, and ignoring items that did not fit their schema of an office, as participants did not actively remember every object in the room and based their recall on expectation, as one would expect in real life. Therefore, the use of deception was justified in this study of schema theory as the participants changed their behaviour and actively rehearsed every detail about the office they were in, potentially picking up on objects or details that their pre-existing knowledge of what an office should look like have ignored.

weaknesses of schema theory

Define weaknesses of schema theory: Lacks explanation. It is not clear exactly how schemas are initially acquired how they influence cognitive processes, how people choose between relevant schemas when categorising people Cohen (1993) argued that: The concept of a schema is too vague to be useful. Overall, with the amount of evidence, schema theory should be considered an important theory that provides insight into information processing and behaviour. It has contributed largely to our understanding of mental processes. But the theory requires further research and refinements to overcome its limitations and uncover its unclear aspects

Conclusion

In all 3 conditions,the nature of the objects were changed to fit their expectations of where and how the objects should look (i.e. a notepad originally on a chair was recalled as being on a desk ). hence it was concluded that the schema of the participants of an office influenced the participants ability to recall objects by drawing more attention to the expected objects and ignoring the objects that did not fit their schema of an office. therefore, the study clearly demonstrates schema theory, and in this case the office is stored as a mental framework forming expectations about the world around us. overall, schema theory does not explain how schemas are acquired and established, and does not explain their mechanisms for influencing cognitive processes. for example the theory does explain why certain incongruent objects can be recalled as well, even though they do not fit in with existing schemas.

what is a schema?

Schemas are mental frameworks of the world which assist our cognition by aiding in recall, guiding our behaviour, helping in making inferences about the future and making sense of the world around us. They are derived from previous experience and knowledge which is then organised into cognitive structures, hence setting up expectations about social and textual contexts.

What was the hypothesis

That the participants would be more likely to remember objects usually found in an office than those that are not.

results of the study

The researchers found that in the two free recall conditions (writing and drawing) participants had a higher chance of remembering objects that fit their expectations of their schema of what an office should contain, as objects that were incongruent to their office schema were often not being recalled. When selecting objects from a list (cued recall) they were more likely to recall the incongruent objects, but also more likely to supposedly recall items that were congruent to the office schema but not present in the room. The very unusual object resulted in better recall than predicted by schema theory.

Strengths of the study

The study confirms schema theory (and reconstructive memory). The participants were debriefed afterwards due to the use of deception and were not harmed.

conformation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence In terms of memory, schemas influence our perception and encoding of information as they tend to make us pay attention to information that is consistent with our schema of the given context, and ignoring all that is not.

what is the theory of reconstructive memory

according to Bartlett, humans constantly search for meaning. based on his research, Bartlett formulated the theory of reconstructive memory. this means that memory is not an exact copy of events but rather an active reconstruction of events, based on our schemas. for this reason, memory cannot be considered reliable.

Limitations of the study

participants were deceived about the true nature of the study (that they would have to recall objects in the office), and were not told when the experiment had actually started. However that was necessary to avoid demand characteristics. This study was a laboratory experiment so it has issues of artificiality (low ecological validity). There is sample bias. University students were used as participants so it may be difficult to generalise the results.

what was the aim of Brewer and Treyens study?

the aim of the study was to investigate whether people's episodic memory for objects in a room (an office) is influenced by existing schemas about what to expect in an office.