Schema Theory

According to George Santayana, “Memory itself is an internal rumor”. This quote means that memory is malleable as it can be easily adjusted, changed, and distorted. As time goes by, memory might fade away from its fundamental clarity. Cases like Bartlett 1932, Loftus and Palmer 1974, French and Richards 1993 and Ronald Cotton explain schema theory and its assistance and obstacles as to recall memory.

Memory plays a vital role in schema theory. Schema is an organized pattern of thought or behavior. It consists of structured cluster of pre-conceived ideas. It represents some aspect of the world and influence memory as people are more likely to notice things that fit into the schema. So, schema is open to distortion because as information contradicts the schema, it will be perceived as exception. It influence people’s perception in a situation and may stay unchanged. Schema theory emphasizes the fact that memory is influenced by already known facts. Pre-existing information of episodic memory and facts of semantic memory alter memory. 

Experiment of Bartlett involved participants being asked to recall a story called “The War of the Ghosts”. Some participants left out some details and showed some tendency to modify the story to fit their own sense. During recalling of the story, distortion of memory of the story occurred and it became clear that the participants used schema theory to interpret the story. It also became clear that participants tend to throw away details in order to make sense of the information. The conclusion of this experiment sure did explain the schema theory because of its demonstration of human memory that memory can reconstruct following the schema. Bartlett concluded that people follow schema theory or unconscious mental structure that represents one’s general information and through that, memory is influenced.

The experiment of French and Richards directly showed the influence of schemata on memory retrieval. Overview of the experiment is that 3 kinds of participants were shown a clock with roman numeric symbols and the number four was represented with IIII, not IV. They were asked to draw this clock and the conclusion was that part of participants wrote IV whereas the other part wrote IIII just as the clock showed. So, this experiment proved to French and Richards that due to schemata knowledge of roman numerals of the participants, it affected the memory retrieval of the participants.

Loftus and Palmer experiment was to test if language used in eyewitness testimony can affect memory. The experiment consisted of participants who were asked to estimate the speed of car using different forms of questions. They changed the verb in each questions such as smashed, bumped, hit, collided and contacted. They concluded that memory is easily distorted by different techniques of questioning. Information can blend causing inaccurate recall of memory. 

Furthermore, case of Ronald Cotton showed how memory can change and adjust according to the situation. Jennifer Thompson, who have been raped, claimed that Ronald Cotton was her raper but it was found out that she was wrong. Though twice she has stated that Ronald Cotton was the attacker, it wasn't true because her memory adjusted in a way that in her memory, Cotton was her attacker, no one else. Her memory through eyewitness testimony was shown to be erroneous. 

To conclude, memory is malleable, as schema theory both helps and hinders the accurate recall of memory. Based on one’s pre-conceived information based one some situation can affect one’s memory either as an advantage or disadvantage. It might allow one to possess the memory but also to change it extensively.