WSC 2018 SCIENCE. Science of Memory

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1 WSC 2018 SCIENCE Science of Memory

2 Schema 101 A schema describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them. It can also be described as a mental structure of preconceived ideas, a framework representing some aspect of the world, or a system of perceiving new information. People are more likely to notice things that fit into their schema, while re-interpreting contradictions to the schema as exceptions or distorting them to fit. Schemata have a tendency to remain unchanged, even in the face of contradictory information. Schemata can help in understanding a rapidly changing world environment as people can organize new perceptions into schemata quickly most situations do not require complex thought when using schema, since automatic thought is all that is required. The concept was popularized in psychology and education through the work of the British psychologist Frederic Bartlett, who drew on the term body schema (muscle memory) used by neurologist Henry Head. It was expanded into schema theory by educational psychologist Richard C. Anderson. Since then, other terms have been used to describe schema such as "frame", "scene" and "script". People use schemata to organize current knowledge and provide a framework for future understanding. Examples of schemata include academic rubrics (mark schemes), stereotypes, social roles, scripts, worldviews, and archetypes. In Piaget's theory of development, children construct a series of schemata, based on the interactions they experience, to help them understand the world.

3 Jean Piaget A Schema is a structured cluster of concepts, it can be used to represent objects, scenarios or sequences of events. The original idea was proposed by philosopher Immanuel Kant as innate structures used to help us perceive the world. A schema (pl. schemata) is the mental framework that is created as children interact with their physical and social environments. For example, many 3-year-olds insist that the sun is alive because it comes up in the morning and goes down at night. These children are operating based on a simple cognitive schema that things that move are alive. Moreover, younger and older children perceive and respond to the same objects and events in very different ways because cognitive structures take different forms at different ages. According to Piaget, children use the process of assimilation and accommodation to create a schema for how they perceive and interpret what they are experiencing. 3 kind of intellectual structures: 1. Behavioral schemata: organized patterns of behavior that are used to represent and respond to objects and experiences. 2. Symbolic schemata: internal mental symbols (such as images or verbal codes) that one uses to represent aspects of experience. 3. Operational schemata: internal mental activity that one performs on objects of thought

4 Jean Piaget Jean Piaget was the Swiss psychologist known for his pioneering work in child development. Piaget s theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology (the study of genesis of knowledge. Schemata are: 1. Critically important building block of conceptual development 2. Constantly in the process of being modified or changed 3. Modified by on-going experiences 4. A generalized idea, usually based on experience or prior knowledge. Physical microstructure of schemata In his Biology and Knowledge, Piaget tentatively hinted at possible physical embodiments for his abstract schema entities. At the time, there was much talk and research about RNA as such an agent of learning, and Piaget considered some of the evidence. However, he did not offer any firm conclusions, and confessed that this was beyond his area of expertise.

5 Frederic Bartlett Through his long association with University of Cambridge, Bartlett strongly influenced British psychological method, emphasizing descriptive case study approach over statistical techniques. In 1922 he became director of the Cambridge Psychological Laboratory and in 1931 was appointed the university s first professor of experimental psychology. Bartlett was elected to the Royal Society in 1932 and was knighted in In his major work, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (1932), Bartlett advanced the concept that memories of past events and experiences are actually mental reconstructions that are colored by cultural attitudes and personal habits, rather than being direct recollections of observations made at the time (cultural psychology). In experiments beginning in 1914, Bartlett showed that very little of an event is actually perceived at the time of its occurrence but that in reconstructing the memory, gaps in observation or perception are filled in with the aid of previous experiences. A later work, Thinking: An Experimental and Social Study (1958), added observations on the social character of human thinking: he recognized various thinking processes that humans use, relating back to the methods he exercised in Remembering (1932) such as story recollection. Experiments on completion were done, where participants were shown open ended stories and told to finish them realistically. What he found was that completion appears even unconsciously, and sheds light on how schemas, as a way of organizing past experiences, lead one towards constructive and predictive processes.

6 Frederic Bartlett In Psychology and Primitive Culture, he explores in particular what happens when groups come into contact with each other and what factors condition the exchange and adoption of culture between the groups. The book is also noteworthy in its argument against the primitive mind (human mindset which ignores contradictions by manipulating the world that does not differentiate between the supernatural and reality; opposite of modern mind which is reflection and logic).

7 War of Ghosts The War of the Ghosts experiment from Remembering (1932) was Bartlett's most famous study and demonstrated the constructive nature of memory, and how it can be influenced by the subject s own schema. A memory is constructive when a person gives their opinion about what had happened in the memory, along with additional influences such as their experiences, knowledge, and expectations. In the experiment, Bartlett assigned his Edwardian English participants to read the Canadian Indian Folklore titled War of the Ghosts. Participants were told to remember the story at extended intervals numerous times. Bartlett found that at longer intervals between reading the story and remembering it, participants were less accurate and forgot much of the information from the story. Most importantly, where the elements of the story failed to fit into the schemata of the listener, these elements were omitted from the recollection, or transformed into more familiar forms. Each participant's report of the story mirrored his or her own culture, Edwardian English culture in this case. An example of this can be demonstrated by some of these participants remembering canoes from the story as boats.

8 War of Ghosts The original concept of schemata is linked with that of reconstructive memory as proposed and demonstrated in a series of experiments by Bartlett. By presenting participants with information that was unfamiliar to their cultural backgrounds and expectations and then monitoring how they recalled these different items of information, Bartlett was able to establish that individuals existing schemata and stereotypes influence not only how they interpret schema-foreign new information but also how they recall the information over time. One of his most famous investigations involved asking participants to read a Native American folk tale, The War of the Ghosts, and recall it several times up to a year later. All the participants transformed the details of the story in such a way that it reflected their cultural norms and expectations, i.e. in line with their schemata. The factors that influenced their recall were: 1. Omission of information that was considered irrelevant to a participant; 2. Transformation of some of the details, or of the order in which events were recalled; a shift of focus and emphasis in terms of what was considered the most important aspects of the tale; 3. Rationalization: details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would be padded out and explained in an attempt to render them comprehensible to the individual in question; 4. Cultural shifts: the content and the style of the story were altered in order to appear more coherent and appropriate in terms of the cultural background of the participant. Bartlett's work was crucially important in demonstrating that long-term memories are not fixed nor immutable but are constantly being adjusted as schemata evolve with experience. In a sense it supports the existentialist view that people construct the past and present in a constant process of narrative adjustment, and that much of what people remember is actually confabulated (adjusted and rationalized) narrative that allows them to think of the past as a continuous and coherent string of events, even though it is probable that large sections of memory (both episodic and semantic) are irretrievable at any given time.

9 Weapons Effect The weapons effect is a phenomenon which refers to the mere presence of a weapon or a picture of a weapon leading to more aggressive behavior in humans, particularly if these humans are already aroused. This should not be confused with the weapon focus (link: theory developed by Elizabeth Palmer that eyewitness testimony is hampered by memory impairment when weapons are present at crime scene). This effect was first described by Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage in 1967 in their paper on an experiment conducted by them at the University of Wisconsin. The researchers tested their hypothesis that stimuli commonly associated with aggression (like weapons) can elicit more aggressive responses from people ready to act aggressively. Subsequent studies have been less successful at replicating the weapons effect, and alternative explanations have been proposed. For example, more recent research has proposed that there are more factors that influence aggression in a situation containing a weapon, such as an individual s familiarity with the weapons present. As work with the weapons effect progressed, researchers also demonstrated the weapons priming effect. This variation refers to even weapon-related words leading to more aggressive behavior in humans. Link: priming