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  • a schema is a generalization of past experiences that forms a scripted pattern of thought.

  • For example, we all have a specific process in mind when we think about going to a restaurant.

  • Some imagine standing in line, placing an order and eating and then throwing the trash away.

  • Others imagine being seated than ordering, sharing everything and then paying, leaving a generous tip.

  • We can think of a schemer as a mental framework in the form of a kid's toy.

  • Things we already fully understand, say a triangle, get into our brain without a problem.

  • When new information is similar to what we know, say a square, it can enter the brain through assimilation for completely new information.

  • Here, a star.

  • This doesn't work.

  • Then we need accommodation on to change the schema itself.

  • Assimilation is the cognitive process of making new information fit in with your existing understanding of the world.

  • It works if new information is close to what we already know to process the new information, we make it fit into our existing schemers.

  • We have to use accommodation if things are so unique that they don't fit into our existing schemer.

  • In other words, to understand something truly new.

  • We first have to remodel our brain space.

  • Just imagine you were born completely colorblind.

  • Not a million books or the best teacher could ever truly explain.

  • Read to you.

  • You need to experience it.

  • To accommodate the idea.

  • Frederick Bartlett demonstrated how schema unconsciously alter our perception and memory in what became known as the War of the Ghosts experiment.

  • He did that by reading to his British students a strange Native American folk tale from the Chino tribe.

  • The story involved ghosts, hunting seals, going to war and canoeing.

  • Later he monitored how the students recalled what they remembered from the story.

  • First days, then weeks.

  • And then months after three striking things happened, one omission of unfamiliar details.

  • Multiple students did not recall apart about the gene oaks going hunting seals.

  • This happens because hunting seals does not naturally fit into the cultural context of rich British students.

  • In other words, they do not have an existing schemer for this kind of information.

  • Therefore, they have a hard time understanding it, and hence can't move it into their long term memory for later recall.

  • And so they forget.

  • Bartlett argue that psychologically we conceive anything that doesn't fit our schemer as irrelevant to Familiarization of things strange.

  • Some of the students that initially did remember the part about hunting seals later recalled.

  • The activity is going fishing.

  • A canoe that was loaded with weapons was remembered as a rowboat.

  • This happens because when we like the words to describe new, unique experiences, we use idioms or figures of speech.

  • In other words, we channel unfamiliar information through the framework of a familiar schemer on, because we do that every time we recall that unique experience.

  • Over time it becomes more familiar and less authentic.

  • Three rationalisation of theological right after it was told, most students thought that the tail was strange.

  • A few weeks later, however, it suddenly made a lot of sense to some of them.

  • The students began to add terms such as therefore, and because, and unconsciously made the story casual and logically coherent.

  • Whenever they retrieved it from memory, they added a reason that you Knox didn't go hunting seals auto war on their canoes.

  • They took the boats because they wanted to go fishing.

  • But let noted that each time the students were asked to recall the story it had changed a bit, which means that long term memories and neither fixed nor immutable, but it constantly being adjusted.

  • This supports the existentialist view that people construct the past in a constant process of adjustment.

  • In other words, much of what we remember is rationalized into a self narrative that allows us to think of our life as a coherent string of events.

  • John P.

  • J, who coined the term, argued that we construct our experiences into Ski Marta so we can make sense of the world sprouts.

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a schema is a generalization of past experiences that forms a scripted pattern of thought.

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