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No. 325. Illinois Univ., Urbana. Center for the Study Off ABSTRACT I DOCUMENT RESUME ED 248 491 CS 007 786 AUTHOR Brewer, William F.; Nakamura, Glenn V. TITLE ,The NatUre and Functions of Schemes. Technical Report -No. 325. INSTITUTION Bolt, Beranek and Newmanl'Inc., Cambridge, Mass.; Illinois Univ., Urbana. Center for the Study off Reading. SPONS AGENCY National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC. PUB DATE Sep 84 CONTRACT 400481-0030 NOTE 91p. PUB TYPE .Reports - Research/Technical (143) 9 EDRS PRICE MF01/PC04 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Artificial Intelligence; *Cognitive Processes; Educational Philosophy; Intellectual History;, *Psychology;-*Repding Research; *Schemata (Cognition) IDINTItIERS Theory Development ABSTRACT Defining schemes as higher order cognitive structures that serve a crucial role in providing an account of how old knowledge interacts with new in perception, langypge, thought; and memory, this paper offers an analytic account ofrthe nature and functions of tichemes in psychological theory and organizessome of the experimental evidence dealing with the operation of schemes in memory. The-paper is organized into six sections, the iirstlof which 'peOvides a detailed examination of the schema conceptsas formulated by F. C. Bartlett in 1932. The second section relates Bartlett's theory to the larger issue of the conflict in psychological theory between ideis from British Empiricism and ideas from Continental philosophy. The third section briefly outlinessome of" the bapic theoretical assumptions of information processing psychologyto serve as a background for an analysis of schema theory, and the fourth examines. modern schema theory,' and contrasts it with Bartlett's theory and with the information processing approach. The fifth section discusses the natures of'schemas, specifically mentioning ontological assumptions, modularity, ecological validity, and . phenomenal experience, chile the final-section devilopsa framework for analyzing the functions of schemes in .thememory process, and then examines a number of recent experiments in tents of this framework. A 16-page bibliography is'iacluded. (FL) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best thatcan be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** CENTER. FOR THE STUDY OF READING Technical Report No. 325 a THE NATUREAND:FATIONSOF ScHEMAS William F. Brewer and Glenn V. Nakamura University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign September 1984 4 bra University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. 51 Gerty Drive 10 Moulton Street .Champaign, Illinois 61820 Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238 US. DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION NATIONAL INSTITUTEDiEDUCATION EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERILI This document has been reproduced es horn ;tie person or organisation originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction cluaIrty. Points of view or opinions stated in this docu ment do not necessarily represent official NIE position or policy. This research was supported in part by the National Instituteof Edueatfon under Contract No. 400-81-0030. We would like to thank Qon Tulany, Brian Ross, Ellen Brewer, and our editors for commentson an earlier version of this paper. To appear in: R. S. Wye and T., K. Srtrll (Eds.), Handbook of social cognition.'Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, in press. V41 2 C.4) \O EDITORIAL 10Altis.' . "If Nagy William Editor Har,y Blanchard 'Patricia Homan // . Nanily,Bryant Asghar Iran-N,Aad Pat Chrosniak Margi Laff Avon Crismore Mr,-rgie Leys, # Linda Fielding Ther4s.rRogers Pan Foertsch Behrooz Tavakol; Meg Gallagher Terry Turner Beth Gudbrandsen Paul Wiison The*Nature and Functions Schemes 2 7( ,.. The Nature and Functions of Schemes Schema theory is one of the most intellectually exciting areas of current cognitive psychology. There has been a very rapid growth of ideas and data on this topicso that it is difficult to understand what has been accomplished. In this paper we attempt to give an analytic account of the nature and functions of schemes in psychological theory and to organizesome of the experimental evidence dealing with the operationof Q.4 schemes in human memory. We will restrict ourselves to laboratory studies and theories from cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence and will not cover the schema literature froth social psychology. Much of this paper is devoted to attempting to understand what schemes are. In brief, they are higher-order cognitive 4 structures that have been hypothesized to underlie many aspects of human, knowledge and skill. They serve a crucialcrole in providing an account of how old ,knowledge interacts with new knowledge.in perception, language, thought, andmemory., 4 This paper is organized Into six sections.The first section is devoted to a detailed examination of the schema concept as formulated by Bartlett. The second section relates Bartlett's theory to the larger issue of the conflict in psychological theory between ideas from British Empiricism ofid ideas from Continental philosophy. The third section briefly 0. 1 af The Nature and Functions of Schemes 3 a outlines some of the basic theoretical assumptions of information processing psychology in order toserve as a background for our analysis of schema theory. In the fourth section we examine Modern schema theory-(e.g.,Minsky, 1975; Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977; Rumelhart, 1980, reprinted in this volume) and contrast P these theories with Bartlett's theory ,and with the information processing approach. In the fifth section we sketch out our own position. In the final section we develop a framework for analyzing the functions of schemes in the human memory process and then examine a number of recent experiments in'terms of this framework. Bartlett's Schema Theory The schema theory Bartlett developed in his book Remembeing (1932), has been the inspiration for most modern schema theories. Bartlett's work is & particularly powerful presentation of schema theory and on some issues his theory is worked out in more depth than current schema theories, so his work merits careful consideration. In this section we will analyze Bartlett's basic Assumptions and lay out the conceptual core of his theory. Bartlett's Definition of Schemes Bartlett (1932) defined a schema as "an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic response" (p. 201). Bartlett's book consists of an elaboration of his schema theory and an application of it to data he had gathered 4 ) The Nature and Functions of Schemes much earlier on memory for figures, pictures, and stories (e.g., Bartlett, 1916 1920, 1921). 4 First we would like to know what kind of construct schemes were for Bartlett. In the texil of modern philosophy of science 4P (cf. Suppe, 1977), was Bartlettan instrumen ;alist (schemes are just constructs used to organize the data)or was he a realist (schemes exist and the schawtheoryattempts to describes them)? It is clear from Bartleteb text that hewas a realist with respect to his schema theory._ Given that he isa realist what kind of entities does'Ae think sdhemas are?It wears he assumes thattheyare unconscious mental processes. In a discussion of the neurologist Head's schema theoryBartlett stated that "schemata-are active, tlithdutany awareness at all" (1932, p. 200) and evenmore clearly in his autobiography he / 'stated that schemai have t<he o same stabs as images and ideas but that they are not available to introspection (1936,p. 47). The hypothesis that schemes are complex unconscious knowledge structures is one of Bartlett's major contributions. In his book Bartlett generously gave Head credit for developing the schema hypothesis. 'However,on this issue, as on many. others, Bartlett's theorvis very different. Head gave only a sketchy account of his approach,, but itseems likely /that he considered schemes to be physiological entities. Thus, he stated, "schemata lie, for ever outside consciousness; they are physiological processes with no direct psychical equivalent" Nig C The Nature and Functions Of Schemes 5 (Head, 1918,.p. 158). Many .psychologists and philosophers have found the concept of an unconscious mentalprocess hard to p accept. When the Wurzberg psychologists postulatedsuch.entities they were attacked by the introspective psychologisti of the time, who belived that the data of psychologywere restricted to conscious phenomena (see Humphrey, 1951). They were also attacked by behaviorists, who thOtight that the data of psychology were restricted to observations of overt blhavior (Watson, 1913). However, in recent years a number of philosophers have made powerful arguments for the acceptance of unconscious mental processes as proper objects of scientific study ke.g., 'Fodor, 1968; Putnam, 1973) and these processes form,the core of modern inform4tion processing ftychology. Properties_ of Schemes c Having established that Bartlett took schemes..to be 'unconscious mental structures, we now examine their characteristics. In Bartlett's (1932) abstract definition of schemes he consistently described them As "organized," butgave little further specification. He did ;state that the term "pattern" would tot bequite Accurate, since it impliesmore .4 detail than he ,intended. However, in the analysis of the \..rious memory experiments reported to his book he gave a number of examples that help clirify his use of the term "organized." He probably intended the term co cover the organization
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