A schema theory

The term schema was first introduced in 1923 by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive development that utilized schemas as one of its key components.

 

Piaget defined schemas as basic units of knowledge that related to all aspects of the world. He said that different schemas are mentally applied in appropriate situations to help people both comprehend and interpret information.

 

To Piaget, cognitive development hinges on an individual acquiring more schemas and increasing the nuance and complexity of existing schemas.

The concept of schema was later described by psychologist Frederic Bartlett in 1932.  Bartlett conducted experiments that tested how schemas factored into people’s memory of events.

He suggested that schemas help people process and remember information. So when an individual is confronted with information that fits their existing schema, they will interpret it based on that cognitive framework. However, information that doesn’t fit into an existing schema will be forgotten.

 

A schema is always connected to other schemas in a web of associations Although schemas can vary in their accessibility, they are long-term, relatively permanent structures that are capable of being searched, retrieved, and stored again.

Types of Schemas

There are many kinds of schemas that assist us in understanding the world around us, the people we interact with, and even ourselves.

 Types of schemas include:

• Object schemas, which help us understand and interpret inanimate objects, including what different objects are and how they work. For example, we have a schema for what a phone is and how to use it. Our computer schema may also include subcategories like editing, gaming, and working with computer.
• Person schemas, which are created to help us understand specific people. It help us such a way that how the way an individual looks, the way they act, what they like and don’t like, and their personality traits.
• Social schemas, which help us understand how to behave in different social situations. For example, if an individual plans to produce a  movie, their movie schema provides them with a general understanding of the making procedures of a movie.
• Event schemas,  which include the sequence of actions and behaviors one expects during a given event. For example, when an individual enter into class room,  they can wear an identity card, on time attend the lecture selecting a seat, silencing their mobile phone, observing  the class carefully, and taking notes.
• Self-schemas, which help us understand ourselves. You can focus on what you know , who are you and what is your history and future,
• Role schemas, which incorporate our expectations of how a person in a specific social role will behave. For example, we expect a professor to be intellectual, commanding and clam. While not all professors will act that way, our schema sets our expectations of each professor we interact with.

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Functions Of Schemas

Schemas can help us efficiently learn and understand new information, at times they may also derail that process. For instance, schemas can lead to prejudice. Some of our schemas will be stereotypes, generalized ideas about whole groups of people. Whenever we encounter an individual from a certain group that we have a stereotype about, we will expect their behavior to fit into our schema. This can cause us to misinterpret the actions and intentions of others.

 

With regard to media effects, schemas have three main functions (

First, they facilitate the processing of information because they enable individuals to organize and retrieve information in a structured manner. 

        Stable schemas lend a sense of order to our understanding of the world. If individuals shifted their schemas in response to any new information this order would be lost, and we would be unable to cope with our environment.

  Second, schemas determine which bits of information are perceived and processed by individuals. Schemas structure the way in which we perceive the world: when a message is matched against a schema, elements of the message are ordered in a manner that reflects the structure of the schema.

 Third and last, schemas help individuals to fill in the gaps when information is incomplete. Individuals are likely to go beyond the information that is presented in the media because they draw inferences that are congruent with their pre-existing schemas.

 According to schema theory, people are cognitive misers because they strive to process the incoming information economically. Therefore, people do not attend to all the information they are exposed to. When confronted with new, incoming information, people draw on their existing schemas to understand and to assimilate the message. 

When individuals cannot identify a schema to understand the message, either they can attempt to establish a new schema, or the information cannot be integrated. 

In fact, schema theory posits that schema-irrelevant information tends to be ignored, and will therefore not be memorized.

  A Schema Theory Perspective On Media Effects

The most extensive application of schema theory in communication research concerns news reception and news effects. 

 As Graber (1984) observed, people would not be able to tame the information tide without their schemas. 

Schema theory helps to explain how people represent the public agenda, learn from the news, resist media information, and change their existing attitudes.

Schemas And Agenda Setting

From a schema theory perspective, issues can be understood as individual schemas. These schemas are stored in long-term memory; they can be retrieved and made salient by media coverage.

The importance that individuals attach to public issues is determined not only by the amount of media coverage but also by individual schemas. Individuals do not simply count how often an issue occurs in the media and assess the issue importance from the simple number of counts.

An agenda-setting effect can be described as an interaction between individual schemas and the amount of media coverage.

According to schema theory, this effect depends on two crucial features.

1.     First, the more frequently a schema is activated, the higher is its accessibility and the more likely are agenda-setting effects.

2.    Second, however, the amount of schema activation depends on the fit between the issue schema and the individual schema. Schemas And Learning From The News

Rumelhart (1980) suggests three broad processes of schema learning: 

accretion, tuning, and restructuring.

Accretion refers to the accumulation of new information into an existing schema, following the schematic structure that is already present. This kind of learning allows the acquisition of large amounts of specific knowledge about a given topic. With regard to media effects, the process of accretion explains why prior knowledge is associated with greater learning. When individuals already possess schemas about a topic, they are more likely to understand the information because it can be easily integrated into an already existing structure. This should also lead to better recall of the information learned.

If individuals are nevertheless willing to process and to understand the information, there must be a modification of existing schemas. This can be accomplished either by the tuning of an existing schema or by the creation of a new one (restructuring). Tuning involves the gradual modification of a schema. This can occur by continuously upgrading it in the direction of the current experience, for instance by adding a new slot to the schema or by generalizing a schema to other situations .  

Schemas And Resistance To Change

Information from the media becomes subject to a schematic filtering. Rarely do individuals process the new information in a neutral and unbiased manner. An activated schema directs attention to certain aspects of a message that are relevant to the schema.

Schematic processing is the principal reason why individuals forget specific details of news reports and retain only global impressions: Individuals mainly extract personally relevant information that suits their personal schemas.

Resistance to schema change is contingent upon at least three other major factors

1.     the level of initial schema development, For well-developed schemas, inconsistent information is confronted with a vast store of consistent information.  This idea corresponds to persuasion theory, which suggests that more knowledgeable people are more difficult to persuade .For example, it is more difficult to change an expert’s schema than a novice’s.

2.     the ambiguity or consonance of the incoming information, The ambiguity of the incoming information also impacts the resistance to schema change. The more ambiguous (i.e., contradictory and conflicting) and the less consonant media coverage is, the less likely is it that an existing schema will change.

3.     the frequency of the inconsistent information. Last but not least, the simple frequency of inconsistent information is a crucial predictor of schema change.

Schemas And Attitude Change

Attitude theories emphasize the evaluative components of attitude objects. A schema theory account of attitude change is built on the idea that attitude change depends on salient schemas.

This idea is based on an associative network model of human  memory, which assumes that knowledge is organized as an associated web of cognitive units such as schemas. Within this network, the activation of one schema can spread through the network to interconnected schemas, leading to the activation of related concepts. At any single point in time, only a small part of the knowledge store is subject to active thought.