week 15

schema and factors of memory

13 January 2016

15.01 Reflection on Semester 1

Write a journal entry that responds to the following questions:

How have you adapted to online learning?

What strategies have worked best for you in terms managing your own
level of engagement?
Is there anything you plan to do differently this coming semester?
Reviewing the feedback your teacher gave you on your assignments, what
did you do well and on what do you intend to focus in order to improve?

I believe I have adapted well to online learning. Although I have had a blended learning
unit online for my school before, I have definitely improved my essential learning skills
with the help of Pamoja. Prior to this psychology course, my thinking, communication,
and research skills were strong. However, my social skills and self-management have

improved drastically. Through discussions, conference, and collaborative projects, Ive

been able to work with others to gain more of an appreciation for the opinions of
individual differences, varying viewpoints, and awareness and respect for other cultures.
Ive also found it very interesting to be able to connect what I learned in psychology with
what I was learning in biology, anthropology, English, parts of math, and theory of
knowledge. Ive been able to organize my time and prioritize my work from my different
classes to improve my self-management skills have. In terms of managing my own level
of engagement, Ive used strategies such as working when I have free periods,
especially when the majority of my grade is in history class, as well as doing my Pamoja
work over the weekend, so I dont procrastinate until the day all the work for the week is
due.
This coming up semester, I plan on putting a little bit more effort in the actual
understanding and studying of the psychology material. Although I was graded well and
received positive, constructive feedback from my teacher on all assignments, I think I
can improve by adding my analysis and explanation of what the question is asking rather
than just stating the facts of each study. As stated before, I intend to focus on
understanding the material clearly in order to improve. By understanding the theories
and levels of analysis, I will better be able to analysis the studies.

15.02 Biological, Social, and Cultural Factors and Memory

This reading will also demonstrate how social and cultural factors have an impact on cognition.
Read pp. 76-81 of your Crane and Hannibal textbook.
Read pp. 18-20 of the Pamoja Supplementary eText, The Cognitive
Level of Analysis: Section 2. Cognitive Processes. C. Biological
Factors and Memory.
Memory and the brain
Cognitive researchers and neuroscientists cooperate to find out how brain structures are
involved in memory processes
Kandels research shows that learning, means formation of a memorythat is, growing
new connections or strengthening existing connections between neurons to form neural
networks.
lesioning is a procedure used in animals brains
o brain damage case studies of humans are used
LTM must consist of several stores

explicit memory which consists of fact-based information that can be consciously

retrieved
o semantic memory, which is memory for general knowledge, knowing what

o episodic memory, which is memory for personal experiences

implicit memory, which contains memories that we are not consciously aware of
o procedural memory, which is the non-conscious memory for skills, habits, and
actionsknowing how
o emotional memory, which is not yet well understood.
hippocampus in the formation of explicit memories
amygdala plays a role in the storage of emotional memoriesperhaps because emotions
are used to evaluate experience.
Clive Wearinghow brain damage affects memory processing
Clive Wearing unable to recall the past or learn anything new
o neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote about him in this article from the New Yorker
(2007)
o musician in his mid-forties
o the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded.
both anterograde and retrograde amnesia
MRI scanning of Clive Wearings brain shows damage to the hippocampus and some of
the frontal regions.
Wearings episodic memory and some of his semantic memory are lost. He cannot
transfer new information into long-term memory either
conducting music and playing piano are implicit memories, which he is still able to do
The case study of HM
Milner and Scoville (1957)
head injury sustained at 9 years old, he suffered from epileptic seizures
surgery to prevent seizures in 1953
o They removed tissue from the temporal lobe, including the hippocampus.
Following the operation, HM could recall information acquired in early life, but
was unable to form new memories.
He can carry on a normal conversation, but he does not recognize people who visit him
regularly
studied 44 years before first MRI in 1997
o became clear exactly which areas were affected by the operation
Cultural factors in cognition
development of cognitive abilities, such as memory, thinking, and problem-solving, is
influenced by the social and cultural context
growing need for people with specialized education.
o you need to learn, understand, and memorize,
o need to learn how to organize information in your memory, and how to retrieve
the appropriate knowledge from your memory when you need it.
Cross-cultural researchthe role of schooling on remembering
o Cole and Scribner (1974) wanted to investigate memory strategies in different
cultures.
compared recall of a series of words in the US and among the Kpelle
people of rural Liberia
words used in the memory experiments were familiar to the participants
recall as many items as possible from four categories: utensils, clothes,
tools, and vegetables.
non-schooled children did not improve their performance on free-recall
tasks after the age of 10
Children who had attended school learned the lists just as rapidly as
children in the US, and they used the same strategy to recallthat is,
based on categorical similarity of the objects.
Kpelle did not appear to apply strategies such as rehearsal or chunking

when the recall task was varied as a narrative, children used chunking
and remember more
Rogoff and Wadell (1982) found that Mayan children could easily recall objects if
they were related in a meaningful way to the local scenery.
even though the ability to remember is universal, strategies for remembering are
not universal.
people learn to remember in ways that are relevant for their everyday lives, and
these do not always mirror the activities that cognitive psychologists use to
investigate mental processes.

o
o
o

C. Biological factors and memory

case studies of Clive Wearing (Sacks, 2007) and HM (Milner et al. 1968) are
evidence of how damage to the hippocampus results in anterograde, and in
Wearings case, retrograde amnesia
This dopamine hypothesis comes from three main sources: post-mortem studies on the
brains of people who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia while alive (Iversen, 1979)
Alzheimers disease, dementia brought on by age
Procedural memory, of how to do things like ride a bicycle, play an instrument or have a
conversation, remains intact for most of the course of the disease
fMRI scans, and post-mortem brain studies, cognitive neuroscientists have begun to
identify the particular biological factors underpinning Alzheimers disease
hippocampus is vital for episodic memory
o acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that is vital for memory
acetylcholine-producing neurons have two characteristic forms of
damage: the deposit of amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles.
They act together in the destruction of brain cells.
Still Alice, by the Harvard neuroscientist Lisa Genova.fictionalised,
o medically-accurate account of early-onset Alzheimers disease
o 2002 first PET scans
o Professor Agneta Nordberg at Karolinska Institutet on a 56-year old Alzheimer's
patient
o high concentrations of amyloid plaques were discovered at an early stage of the
disease
o greater accumulation of plaque is accompanied by a reduction in the number of
neuronal nicotinic receptors in the brain

15.03 Psychology in the News

You may have read news reports about the tragic shooting of a Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin.
The case has attracted considerable attention among psychologists and other commentators,
who have all expressed a wide range of opinions.

Read the following articles:

o Psychological Issues In Trayvon Martin Shooting
Case (Links to an external site.)
o Cognitive Biases Manifest in Trayvon Martin Case
(Links to an external site.)
o Trayvon Martin murder trial: jury finds George
Zimmerman not guilty (Links to an external site.)
Write a post where you reflect on the following issues:
o How does schema theory relate to events
surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin?
o What specific insights has psychology provided into
the causes of these tragic events?

Schema theory has been used to explain memory processes. Cognitive psychologists
divide memory processes into three main stages:
encoding: transforming sensory information into a meaningful memory
storage: creating a biological trace of the encoded information in memory, which is
either consolidated or lost
retrieval: using the stored information
schema is the system of understanding knowledge

Psychological Issues In Trayvon Martin Shooting Case

shooting death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin

Racial prejudice may have primed the shooter, George Zimmerman, to believe
that any African American walking in his neighborhood posed a threat.
suffered from paranoia, or unreasonable suspicion
o called police 46 times in the months leading up to the shooting
When governed by the confirmation bias you only see evidence that supports
your belief about a situation
Racist beliefs may have combined with a paranoid imagination
self-fulfilling prophecy bias
Martin said someone was following him. Martin walked fast at first, then he ran,
according to the girl
o Zimmermans bias may have created the violent encounter he seemed
determined to prevent
faulty decisions based on perceptual distortions and biases
Those with high levels of anxiety interpret ambiguous stimuli

Cognitive Biases Manifest in Trayvon Martin Case

biases that emerge as the mind attempts to make sense of ambiguous social
information

Though memory encodingthe initial process whereby these witnesses

mentally recorded the events they saw and heardis imperfect in and of itself,
the high degree of publicity surrounding this case sets up the conditions whereby
misleading or ambiguous information reported in the media
remembering accurately is a difficult task for the human mind.
what went through Zimmerman's mind that night as he saw Martin, called the
police, pursued, and eventually shot Martin.
saw things that he then interpreted within his own mental frameworks based
upon his prior experience
Motivated reasoning and subconscious prejudice can be a powerful combination

Trayvon Martin murder trial: jury finds George Zimmerman not guilty

The schema theory relates to this case in the way George Zimmerman had been
thinking as he saw Martin, called the police, followed Martin, which lead him to shooting
him. Zimmerman used his personal schema, which he developed over time through
living in his neighborhood as a community watch volunteer, to analyze what was
happening the night of Trayvon Martins death. It seems like he may have been looking
for criminal activity, as he had on previous nights when there were 46 instances of him
calling emergency 911. He saw a teenager who had the potential of being suspicious
and acted in a racially prejudicial way, though subconsciously, by following him, even
though the police on the phone told him not to. The schema of the witnesses could also
have been affected by the memory encoding of mentally recording the event and later
retrieving and recalling those details. The human mind does have difficulty accurately
remembering events. Finally, with everyones own schemata, they form their personal
opinion on the situation based on the information they have received through the media.
We use our first instincts and fit the story around a template from a similar experience.
These are known as predisposed conclusions to make sense of an ambiguous situation.
The jury used their schema to decide that George Zimmerman was innocent and only
guilty of self-defense.
As mentioned, psychology has provided specific insights into the causes of these tragic
events, including paranoia (unreasonable suspicion), confirmation bias (only seeing
evidence that supports personal bias), self-fulfilling prophecy bias, and racist beliefs.
Zimmerman made faulty decisions based on perceptual distortions and personal biases
from his schema.

15.04 CLOA Empirical Studies Checklist

15.05 Self-assessed SAQ: Research Study on Schema Theory

Review the work you completed in Week 13.03 on schema theory and the
studies by Bartlett (1932) and Anderson and Pichert (1978).

aim: is schema processing influence by both encoding and retrieving

story based on 72 points of a potential house-buyer or burglar
buyer schema vs. burglar schema
distracting task for 12 minutes before recall was tested
5 minute delay
half group switched schemas, half group had original schema, asked to recall
again
participants who switched had 7 per cent more points on the second recall test
compared to the first trial, mostly associated with new schema
group who continued with first schema remember less points
schema processing must have some effect at retrieval as well as at encoding,
because the new schema could only have influenced recall at the retrieval stage.
people encoded information which was irrelevant to their prevailing schema
controlled and conducted in a laboratory, so there may be issues of ecological
validity

establish a cause-and-effect relationship on how schemas affect different

memory processes.

cognitive processes are influenced by social and cultural factors.

British psychologist Frederic Bartlett, who coined the term schema, which is defined
as a mental representation of knowledge
Bartlett was particularly interested in how cultural schemas influence remembering
memory is subject to distortions
The aim was to determine whether the culture of the participants would
influence a cognitive process- memory of a native american legend
The participants were given a piece of writing that didn't follow their cultural
schema and investigated if this had an impact on how they remembered the
writing
Participants were English Cambridge university students, but were told a
Native American legend
tended to slightly modify the stories when they were reproducing it using their
memory.
ex. canoe = boat, seal hunting = fishing
information could not be assimilated into their schemas, because of
unfamiliarity.
fit their culture through imaginative reconstruction of an experience

Short Answer Question:

Describe one research study that has investigated schema theory.
One study that has investigated the schema theory is that of Anderson and Pichert in 1978.
The aim of the laboratory experiment was to discover the effects of schemas on the memory
process and to see if both encoding and retrieval were involved. The procedure included the
participants reading a story of two boys who had stayed home from school one Thursday
and went to one of their houses because nobody would be home. The story was based on
72 points, such as the house being in a nice neighborhood, but it had a leaky roof and there
was a coin collection inside. Different points were associated with the different schemas.
Participants were told to take the viewpoint of either a potential house buyer or a burglar.
They were immediately tested for recall, which tested their encoding memory process. Half
the group recalled information with a house buyer schema and the other half recalled with a
burglar schema. After being tested, they completed a 12-minute distraction task followed by
an additional 5-minute delay. Then, half the group was tested again with their original
schema, while the other have switched their schema, so half the original participants with a
house buyer schema now had a burglar schema and vice versa. The results found that those
participants who were asked to switch were able to remember 7% more points, which
allowed the researchers to conclude that retrieval is also involved in the memory process
when associated with a specific schema. The brain even stores information which may be
irrelevant to the personal schema, as the participants who switch showed they remembered
more the second trial even after changing their viewpoint. Those who kept their same
schema actually were not able to recall as much information as they did in the first trial,
immediately after reading the story. This experiment may have some issues with ecological
validity because it was conducted in a controlled laboratory setting. However, because there
was a control, a cause-and-effect relationship was established for how schemas affect
different memory processes. Anderson and Pichert's study supports the schema theory. All
scientists now know that memory uses both the encoding and retrieval stages no matter the
schema based on the recall of participants with different schema viewpoints.

Self-Assessment:Grade: 7/8
Grade: 7/8
The conditions of the command term were met, as the study was "described." A detailed account
of the study of Anderson and Pichert of 1978 was given. This is one research study that has
investigated schema theory. The response has accurately included all parts of the question. The
student accurately stated the aim, procedure, results, and conclusion of the study while
connecting it back to the question at hand about the schema theory. However, to receive full
marks, the response could have included a bit more of an evaluation and analysis of the material
from this study.
correction: no evaluation in SAQs, stay focused on question

16.02 and 18.03 ERQ

Discuss how social or cultural factors affect one cognitive process.

http://recordings.eu.blindsidenetworks.com/pamojaeducation/d442421ee8b
ea69173ce3ed13a3545a45b358e90-1453045489332/capture/
cognitive process: memory (How do I know what I know?)

Bartlett:
not an experiment, no control
The aim was to determine whether the culture of the participants
would influence a cognitive process- memory of a native american
legend
The participants were given a piece of writing that didn't follow their
cultural schema and investigated if this had an impact on how they
remembered the writing
Participants were English Cambridge university students, but were
told a Native American legend
tended to slightly modify the stories when they were reproducing it
using their memory.
ex. canoe = boat, seal hunting = fishing
How is culture affecting memory?
vocabulary
familiar
o information could not be assimilated into their schemas,
because of unfamiliarity.
perception of the event
retrieval of culturally acceptable
o fit their culture through imaginative reconstruction of an
experience

Cole and Scribner 1974

memory strategies and the way we learn
western education seems to teach and test a certain type or form of
memorizing
what if we were to test the Kpelle children on some other memory
based task?
maybe we coulc conclude that different methods of memorizng
worked for different cultures
The children of a particular group would have the same ability as a
schooled or educated student if they are given information that is
associable with each group of indivdiuals there is no difference in
intelligence it is the material at the school that influences overall
knowledge. All children have the same ability.

cross-cultural difference in memory working abilities

Imbo

and LeFevre 2009

effects the working memory ability
focused or broad approach to choosing a strategy
culture - assuming education
o They were all Canadian How long were they educated in
Canada?... Is an overall cultural norm?... Could it be
biological?... Could it be language?

include critical thinking questions/evaluation at the end of response