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Schemas are mental structures that organise our knowledge. Related terms are stereotypes, scripts and mental models.1
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Schemas are mental structures that organise our knowledge. Related terms are stereotypes, scripts and mental models.1
Before supermarkets you didn’t just help yourself to the goods – you asked the shopkeeper, who stood behind a counter. So Sainsbury’s had to change their customers’ concept of shopping – their mental schema – when they introduced self-service in the early 1950s.
Many people have poorly developed schemas about topics such as pensions, tax, health, technology and the law.
Schema theory is associated with the psychologist Frederic Bartlett2 and it is also central to the work of the child psychologist Jean Piaget, who saw schemata as the basic building blocks of thinking. We see every object as part of a set of similar objects, with similar purposes and characteristics.
Schemas are often referred to as schemata, which is the correct plural form of the Greek word schema.
1. Anderson, R. C. & Pearson, P. D. (1984). A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), Handbook of Reading Research (pp. 255-291). New York, NY: Longman.
2. Bartlett, F.C. (1932), Remembering: An Experimental and Social Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press