1. Bartlett’s concept of schema in reconstruction
The focus of this chapter, as the title suggests, is “Bartlett’s concept of schema”. The title has a double meaning: 1) I will look at the place of schema in the act of constructive remembering. 2) I will consider how the concept of schema has been reconstructed by each new generation of psychologists.
The general argument will be that schema has been transformed from a temporal, holistic, functional and embodied concept into a spatial, atomistic, structuralist and disembodied concept.
It will be helpful to start by presenting the context in which the schema concept was developed.
Brady Wagoner
Aalborg University

2. From storage to action
Memory is not a substance, but rather an activity taking place at the intersection between an organism and its environment
Holistic research methodology using narratives and images, as natural settings as possible, and analysis of qualitative changes in successive reproductions.
Develops theory of remembering as a constructive generalization contra the idea of memory storage.

3. Henry Head
Bartlett worked closely with Head in the 1920s. Head had the habit of reading Bartlett drafts of his Aphasia and Kindred Speech Disorders (1926) during these meetings. It is safe to say Bartlett thought Head’s work extremely important and attempted to bring his own research in line with it.

4. Henry Head Worked with brain damaged patients from WWI
Some had lost the ability to register changes in body position, but mental imagery was intact.
Others suffered from a phantom limb
Posits ‘schema’ as “combined standard against which all subsequent changes in posture are registered before they enter consciousness”
Schema extends to anything contributing to body movement –e.g., a cane or car.

5. Bartlett’s objections
1) Head’s phrase “storehouse of ideas” is misplaced (as it suggests the storage metaphor). 2) No strict separation between consciousness and unconsciousness. 3) “I strongly dislike the term ‘schema’.” He prefers “active developing patterns” or better “organized settings”.

6. Bartlett’s definition
“‘Schema’ refers to an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences... a particular response is possible only because it is related to other similar responses which have been serially organised, yet which operate, not simply as individual members coming one after another, but as a unitary mass.” Schema “are actively doing something all the time”
Dynamic regulation WITH the environment; not determination BY the environment. How we are regulated by the environment depends on organism defined activity. Schema is self-constructed psychological context of action.

7. ‘Turning around on ones schema’
Implies rupture in flow of embodied action in the environment, such as when a mental image appears.
The past is made “objects of his reaction”
Self-conscious control of action: schemata are “not merely something that works the organism, but something that the organism can work” (p. 208)

8. Reconstructing Schema Phase 1 (1930s – 1960s)

9. Northway’s (1940) Reconstruction
SCHEMA are: “what the subject makes (creates or develops) from the given material (or situation)” (cf. Bartlett’s “effort after meaning”)
School children learned a text by one of THREE DIFFERENT LEARNING METHODS (e.g., Repetition vs. Project method)
SCHEMATIC DIFFERENCES are revealed not in quantitative scores but in children’s ability to flexibly transform material into new forms.

10. Comparison with Bartlett
Learning and remembering are ongoing activities.
Focus on qualitative changes
Explores schema as a flexible adaptation to the environment (rather than imposing accuracy imperative)

11. Reconstructing Schema Phase II (1960s -1980s)
Neisser (1967) is explicitly inspired by Bartlett’s work (1932, 1958). However, a core feature of Bartlett’s approach drops away – his notion of “an effort after meaning”, which is more fundamental to his approach than the concept of schema. Neisser highlights Bartlett’s later work without mentioning the earlier interest in cultural dynamics. Schema are plans used by individuals to reconstruct memories. He gives the example of “reconstructing the dinosaur”. Schema help put the individual pieces still in existence back together into a whole.

12. Cognitive Psychology
Explosions of schema theories and its derivatives, such as “scripts” and “frames”
Neisser (1967): ‘a nonspecific but organized representation of prior experience’.
Schmidt (1975): ‘Abstract representations of knowledge about actions.’
Rumelhart (1980): ‘a data structure for representing the generic concepts stored in memory’ (p. 34)
Neisser (1967) is explicitly inspired by Bartlett’s work (1932, 1958). However, a core feature of Bartlett’s approach drops away – his notion of “an effort after meaning”, which is more fundamental to his approach than the concept of schema. Neisser highlights Bartlett’s later work without mentioning the earlier interest in cultural dynamics. Schema are plans used by individuals to reconstruct memories. He gives the example of “reconstructing the dinosaur”. Schema help put the individual pieces still in existence back together into a whole.

13. Associative networks

14. Scripts

15. Mandler’s (1984) idealized story grammar

16. Mandler and Johnson’s (1977) War of the Ghosts story schema

17. Comparison with Bartlett
Static structure (no development)
Focused on elements or nodes (not holistic)
Seen to be in the mind/brain, i.e. structural (not functional, embodied)
No notion of “turning around on ones own schema”
It is hierarchically organized like Bartlett’s notion – activity organized by an interest.

18. Reconstructing Schema Phase 3 (1990s -2000s)
Increasing interest in the cultural dimensions of schema
Discursive psychology interprets schema (‘organized setting’) as social context (dynamically established and developed)
Mori (2008) attempts to study both social and personal dimensions of schema.

19. Mori’s re-embodiment of schema
Participants 1
Participant 2
Stage 1
Navigation
Navigation of University A
Navigation of University B
Stage 2
(a month later)
Participants exchange their navigation experience each other
Stage 3
(two weeks later)
‘Interrogator’ asks questions about participants navigation experience of university A and B

20. Mori’s re-embodiment of schema
…indicates different ‘organization of schema’

21. Comparison with Bartlett
Explores both personal AND social aspects of remembering.
Emphasizes the body, temporality and social context.
Innovation: modeling social context, and capturing the experiential qualities of coming into bodily contact with an environment through narrative

22. Summary
Schema was originally developed as an alternative to the trace theory of memory
It was embodied, dynamic, temporal and holistic
In time the concept was transformed into the opposite of this
However, methodologies sensitive to qualitative differences in schematic organization are being developed

23. Thank you!!!