Abstract

Schemas are associational networks used in memory, predictions of event outcomes, and cognitive tasks that have theoretical significance in many different fields of psychology. Historically, as the concept of schemas spread to various disciplines and became applied to more and more topics, the definition of what a schema is and what properties schemas are supposed to have started becoming very broad. Such imprecision can lead to generalizability issues in neuroimaging studies wherein one attempts to identify what parts of the brain are used to process schemas. This paper aims to critically evaluate and compare research examining different kinds of schema, such as social scripts or hierarchical categories, and identify any meaningful differences between different types of schema. Data suggests that social scripts and hierarchical schemas may use overlapping but non-identical cortical networks, but too little research has been done under similar conditions to draw strong conclusions. A set of five behavioral criteria are proposed for use to clearly define schemas and their application by participants in an experiment. These criteria include properties schema have consistently demonstrated in behavioral research: A predisposition towards remembering schema congruent events and information; a tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli in schema congruent ways; the ability to accommodate new schema-relevant information into a schema faster than learning new schema-independent information; a tendency to generalize pre-existing schema onto new stimuli that resemble the characteristics that define members of the schema; and the ability to change between different active schemas that describe the same features based on contextual cues. The importance of expanding neurological research into other less researched categories of schema is also addressed.

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