General Knowledge Schemas and Scripts schema generalized

1
General Knowledge

• Chapter 8

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Schemas and Scripts

• schemageneralized knowledge about a situation,
  an event, or a person
• schema theories especially helpful when
  psychologists try to explain how people process
  complex situations and events
• scripts

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Schemas and Scripts

• Background on Schemas and Scripts
• schema theories propose that people encode
  "generic" information about a situation, then use
  this information to understand and remember new
  examples of the schema
• top-down and bottom-up processing
• heuristicsgeneral rules that are typically
  accurate
• active processing
• schemas can lead to errors

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Schemas and Scripts

• Background on Schemas and Scripts
• Piaget
• Bartlett
• social psychology
• schema therapy
• scriptsimple, well-structured sequence of events
• scripts recalled more accurately if identified in
  advance

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Selection
• Enhanced Memory for Schema-Consistent Material
• Brewer and Treyens (1981)
• recall objects from waiting room
• highly likely to recall objects consistent with
  "office schema"
• "remembered" items that were not in the room, but
  were consistent with "office schema"
• Neuschatz and coauthors (2002)
• "lecture schema"

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Selection
• Enhanced Memory for Schema-Inconsistent Material
• people are more likely to recall
  schema-inconsistent material when that material
  is vivid or surprising
• Davidson (1994)read stories describing
  well-known schemas people especially likely to
  recall schema-inconsistent events that
  interrupted the normal, expected story

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Selection
• The Status of Schemas and Memory Selection
• Rojahn and Pettigrew (1992)meta-analysis
  schema-inconsistent material was somewhat more
  memorable
• However, when people "remember" events that never
  actually happened, they are likely to construct a
  schema-consistent event

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Boundary Extension
• Boundary extensionour tendency to remember
  having viewed a greater portion of a scene than
  was actually shown
• Intraub and colleaguessee photo then draw
  replica of photo participants consistently
  produced a sketch that extended the boundaries
  beyond the view presented in the original photo
• activate a perceptual schema
• relevance in eyewitness testimony situations

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Abstraction
• abstractiona memory process that stores the
  meaning of a message but not the exact words
• verbatim memoryword-for-word recall

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Abstraction
• The Constructive Approach
• Bransford and Franks (1971)
• listen to sentences from several different
  stories
• recognition test including new items
• people convinced that they had seen these new
  items before (false alarm)
• false alarms particularly likely for complex
  sentences consistent with the original schema
• false alarms unlikely for sentences violating the
  meaning of the earlier sentences

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Abstraction
• The Constructive Approach
• constructive model of memorypeople integrate
  information from individual sentences in order to
  construct larger ideas later cannot untangle the
  constructed information from the verbatim
  sentences

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Abstraction
• The Pragmatic Approach
• pragmatic view of memorypeople pay attention to
  the aspect of a message that is most relevant to
  their current goals

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Abstraction
• The Pragmatic Approach
• Murphy and Shapiro (1994)
• read letters from "Samantha" to cousin or
  boyfriend
• bland vs. sarcastic comments
• recognition test on original, paraphrased, or
  irrelevant sentences

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Pragmatic Approach
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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Abstraction
• The Pragmatic Approach
• Murphy and Shapiro (1994) (continued)
• correct recognition was higher for sentences from
  the sarcastic condition than for sentences in the
  bland condition
• more false alarms for paraphrases of bland
  sentences than sarcastic sentences
• more accurate in their verbatim memory for the
  sarcastic version than for the bland version

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Memory Abstraction
• The Current Status of Schemas and Memory
  Abstraction
• two approaches (Constructive and Pragmatic) quite
  compatible
• in many cases we integrate information into large
  schemas
• in some cases we know that specific words matter
  and pay close attention to precise wording

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• inferenceslogical interpretations and
  conclusions that were not part of the original
  stimulus material

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• The Classic Research on Inferences
• Bartlett (1932)memory as the complex interaction
  between the participants' prior knowledge and the
  material presented individual's unique interests
  and personal background often shape the contents
  of memory
• "The War of the Ghosts" studyNative American
  story read and recalled by British students

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• The Classic Research on Inferences
• "The War of the Ghosts" study (continued)
• Participants tended
• to omit material that didn't make sense from
  their own viewpoint
• to shape the story into a more familiar framework
• to add extra material to the story, making
  inferences so that the story made more sense from
  their perspective
• to borrow more heavily from their previous
  knowledge as time passed before additional recall

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Research on Inferences Based on Gender
  Stereotypes
• gender stereotypeswidely shared sets of beliefs
  about the characteristics of females and males

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Research on Inferences Based on Gender
  Stereotypes
• Explicit Memory Task
• Dunning and Sherman (1997)
• read sentences followed by recognition-memory
  test
• "new" sentences consistent or inconsistent with
  gender stereotypes
• more likely to mistakenly "remember" a new
  sentence as "old" when it was consistent with a
  gender stereotype

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Research on Inferences Based on Gender
  Stereotypes
• Implicit Memory Tasks
• 1. Using neuroscience techniques to assess gender
  stereotypes
• Osterhout, Bersick and McLaughlin (1997)ERP
  technique
• stereotype-consistent sentences vs.
  stereotype-inconsistent sentences
• change in ERPs for stereotype-inconsistent words
  but not for stereotype-consistent words

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Research on Inferences Based on Gender
  Stereotypes
• Implicit Memory Tasks
• 2. Using the Implicit Association Test to assess
  gender stereotypes
• Nosek, Banaji, and Greenwald (2002)
• Implicit Association Test (IAT)based on the
  principle that people can mentally pair related
  words together much more easily than they can
  pair unrelated words

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Research on Inferences Based on Gender
  Stereotypes
• Implicit Memory Tasks
• 2. Using the Implicit Association Test to assess
  gender stereotypes (continued)
• Stereotype-Consistent pairings (male/math vs.
  female/arts)
• Stereotype-Inconsistent pairings (female/math vs.
  male/arts)

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Research on Inferences Based on Gender
  Stereotypes
• Implicit Memory Tasks
• 2. Using the Implicit Association Test to assess
  gender stereotypes (continued)
• participants responded significantly faster to
  the stereotype-consistent parings than to the
  stereotype-inconsistent pairings
• technique can be used to examine attitudes, as
  well as stereotypes

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Implications of Inferences for Persuasion
• Advertising
• Harris and colleagues (1989)
• read stories containing advertising slogans
• direct claim vs. implied claim
• people who had seen the implied-claim version
  often believed they had seen the direct-claim
  version
• Consumers be careful

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Schemas and Scripts

• In Depth Schemas and Inferences in Memory
• Implications of Inferences for Persuasion
• Politics
• statements can be technically accurate but still
  misleading
• listeners make incorrect inference
• people make inferences only in certain
  situations often recall material in its original
  form

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Integration in Memory
• Integration and Delayed Recall
• background knowledge may not encourage
  schema-consistent integration if people are
  tested immediately after the material is learned
• Harris and colleagues (1989)
• story consistent with U.S. or traditional Mexican
  culture
• no chaperone/chaperone
• recall after 30 minutesno tendency for the
  Mexican-schema stores to shift in the direction
  consistent with U.S. schemas
• after two daysthe students had shifted a
  significant number of story details

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Schemas and Scripts

• Schemas and Integration in Memory
• Integration and Limited Memory Capacity
• schemas are more likely to influence memory
  integration when memory capacity is strained
  during recall, but not on a relatively simple task

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Schemas and Scripts

• Conclusions About Schemas
• 1. We often select material for memory that is
  inconsistent with our schemas.
• 2. We may indeed remember that we saw only a
  portion of an object, rather than the complete
  object.
• 3. We frequently recall the exact words of a
  passage as it was originally presented.

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Schemas and Scripts

• Conclusions About Schemas
• 4. We often avoid making inappropriate
  inferences.
• 5. We may keep the elements in memory isolated
  from each other, rather than integrated together.
• 6. When we are recalling information from our
  real-life experiencesrather than information
  created by researcherswe may be more accurate.