Psychology Schema Flashcards

Definition of Schema

• Schema refers to mental structures that help us process and organize information around us through mental representations, including past experiences, culture, age, and gender.

Types of Schema

• Scripts: schemas about a sequence of events, such as going to work or making coffee.
• Social schemas: mental representations about various groups of people, including stereotypes.
• Self-schemas: mental representations about ourselves.
• Person schemas: mental representations about specific people.

Social Schemas and Perception

• Darley and Gross (1983) study: showed that social schemas can affect our perception, as participants judged a girl's academic performance based on her perceived socioeconomic status.
• This demonstrates how social schemas can act as a lens to interpret ambiguous information.

Bartlett's "War of the Ghosts" Experiment

• Aim: to explore how social and cultural factors can affect our schemas.
• Method: participants were asked to reproduce a Native American folk story, either through repeated reproduction or serial reproduction.
• Results:
  • The story became shorter and more concise over time.
  • Words were changed to reflect more culturally familiar things.
  • People altered culturally unfamiliar things to make the story more understandable and fit their schemas.

Conclusion of Bartlett's Experiment

• Memory is subjective to pre-existing schemas.
• Limitations:
  • Outdated study.
  • Lack of specificity in instructions.
  • Inconsistent time intervals between participants.
  • Low internal validity.

Bransford and Johnson's "Washing Clothes" Study

• Aim: to investigate the effect of context on comprehension and memory.
• Method: participants were given a passage about washing clothes, either with or without context.
• Results:
  • Participants who received context before the passage had better recall.
  • Context helps activate schemas, aiding encoding and understanding.

Evaluation of Bransford and Johnson's Study

• Strengths: controlled lab setting, no ethical concerns.
• Weaknesses: low ecological validity, low generalizability due to sample of psychology students.

Function of Schema

• Enables us to make shortcuts when interpreting information, allowing for faster understanding.

Test your knowledge on schemas in psychology with these flashcards. Explore various definitions, types, and examples of schemas that help us understand how we process information and form mental representations.