Schema and Script

Schema is a generalized knowledge about a situation or event. We form a schema about almost everything that has a certain pattern, or can be thought of as an abstraction with defined characteristics. In a schema we use mostly top-down processing. We use schemas to predict what will happen in a new situation. Every Fall you wonder which one of your students is the best. You have a previously formed schema about how a "best student" should be, should behave, should look like. We use these general patterns of knowledge, or heuristics, to relate to our environment and share our knowledge with others. We remember the new information based on our previous schema. The more consistent is the new information with the preexisting schema the better is remembered. When the material to be remembered is schema inconsistent, in order to be better remembered that new information has to develop a vivid memory that interrupts the existent schema (e.g., your best student one year had pink died hair, tatoos, and piercings. It is likely that you will remember very vivid that one.).

When we process new perceptual information (which happens to be a partial image of an object) and are asked to make a sketch of what we have seen we use top-down processing (which implies seeing the complete). For that reason our sketch will represent the entire information, that is because we expand the boundary in our perceptual processing. Now remember the falshbulb memory? We did a similar thing when instead of keeping a perfect memory in time, when we retrieve that "flashbulb" we add some new information to the existent one. In boundary extension we use the perception of our existent schema, and that is why we add information to the original one, by using Gestalt principles. We reconstruct the schema in the process of recall.

You have a personal schema that might be modified function of the environment you must perform. You behave in one way when at your work place, different when you are in the role of student, and different in your family, or with your friends. There is a cultural schema as well, and that depends on the information that is consistent with that culture. I might have told the story that I found it difficult to play the greeting game when I first came to the United States. "Hi, how are you doing?" "Good thanks, and how are you?" "Fine thanks..." means nothing more than "hello" and then the real conversation can start. In Romania if someone asks me "how are you?" the preson expects that I say something deeper than just a word game, then I will tell in a sentence about how I feel or what I do, or what I am up to, and the person will listen. So, my schema had to be accomodated to the new cultural meaning of greeting.

A script is a schema that has repetitive information, that usually repeats in time, as you would repeate more or less a recipe when you make a favorite dish. We have a script for most of our daily rutines.

Since we are born we develop scripts: about waking up and going to bed, eating at home or at a restaurant, dressing, playing, going to school, going to work, interacting with strangers and friends, etc. Scripts are one more easy and efficient way our brain adapts to this life.

One of my students posted this very nice description of how she teaches little ones about "coming in the morning to school," since this is such a wonderful description of a script I will post it here unmodified:


"For the first two weeks of school I had morning bus duty. I greeted the students as they got off the bus and directed them to where they needed to go. I can laugh now but at the time this was very frustrating. Everyday certain kindergarten students would ask, "Where do I go?", "Where is my class?". The script was simple-you come in and either follow the yellow line to breakfast or go down the steps and sit with your class on the gym floor (which is in the same place everyday)!You're teacher meets you in the gym and you follow her to class, where you unpack your backpack and hang it in your locker. Day after day this became routine for most, but for others it was new every morning. After the first week and a half, I finally noticed my stragglers pausing in the lobby trying to decide whether they were to walk down the steps or the hallway. At times I said nothing, just simply watched, other times I intervened with a question. By the end of the full two weeks, the script for school arrival was learned by everyone."