“Schema – a genome of experience”

Schema or Schemata

PERSON A- What is a schema?  Why is it called the building block of our mind?

PERSON B-Do you now we all are made up of our experiences, and our experiences shape our personality and cognition thereafter this cognition determines our behavior.

INFORMER: Oh, man that’s a load of questions!!!

So, let me start with the basic information of schemas. We hear our elders say that we are made up of our experiences. Why do say they say this? What is the significance. Firstly, schemas come under the cognitive development of the brain. A schema is set of preconceived ideas that our brain uses to perceive and interpret new information. Physiologically these schemas start as simple set of frameworks and then further develop into more complex structures. They can be conceived as what we call a platform or a representation or a blueprint for the description of information of an object, event or any idea. In simple words whatever we experience, feel can be described by as a set of existing networks build in our brain.

Piaget (1952, p.7) defined a schema as:

“a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core memory.”

In Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, he believed that schemas are a categorization of knowledge patterns, processing the acquired knowledge and making the best use of that knowledge by adapting with the environment.

For example, a kid has a schema that a four-legged animal is called a ‘DOG’. So whenever that kid sees any animal he would recognize it as dog. Until he is fed with the new information about the visual description of other 4-legged animals, he will continue to believe that all 4 – legged animals are dogs because the characteristics fits into the existing schema category.

Here if his information is modified by his parent or teacher, like if he is corrected there and then not all four-legged animals are dogs, and is introduced to a ‘cat’ he forms a new experience by modifying the existing schema or by creating a new one for ‘the cat’.

Basically, schemas are simple structures forming a network in our brain to condense information from the outer world. Schemata per say can been sought as a chip in a computer, every schema has different data stored for different situations, it can be modified and gets complicated with time as the load of information increases on every experience.

PERSON – A : so we can say that like computers have programming language like java scripts or C++, we humans have schemas as building block units to understand and interpret the information available to us.

INFORMER –  yes exactly, but there’s more to it, than just interpreting the information. They help us in making decisions, or how we should act in a certain situation, how we judge things. They help is dangerous situations, by predicting what all can happen. Aforementioned, schemas get complex with the consecutive cognitive development of the individual. With the complex development of the brain, it becomes easy to encode the information.

This can be understood by learning about different types of schemas and how we develop them:

• ROLE SCHEMAS:  role schemas include our notions or expectations of how a person would behave in a particular social role. For example we expect a doctor, wearing a white coat to be humble, polite, kind a very well-mannered person.
• SELF- SCHEMAS: self- schemas, are only focused on the self. It encompasses what we believe, think or idealize about one self, about our own behavior, present situations, or future. It is a pattern of information surrounded around the self- image of that individual. For example, if I believe that I am weakling and I will not be able to arm wrestle with my sibling who as very good body build, I will definitely direct my efforts in avoiding the situation of arm wrestling rather than preparing myself for the fight.
• PERSON SCHEMAS: Person schemas are directed to understand specific people. Like how person ‘A’ behaves or acts in certain situation, what kind of a personality he/she has. What kind of traditions that person follows etc.
• EVENT SCHEMAS: known as scripts, are the already assumed sequence of actions and patterns expected during an event. For example, a person, who is going to watch a cricket match at stadium would likely to presume, certain set of events like, national anthem ceremony of the opposing teams, toss battle and the sequence of the  game {batting first, and balling after }.                                                                                                                                   So these different types of schemas help us to process the information in a simpler way. These can be referred as the shortcuts to process larger information. Many researches have found that schemas not only help us to encode information, they also influence our memory and attention. They fasten our brain functioning, help us think faster, learn more and quickly adapt to the changing environments.

SPORT SPECIFIC SCHEMA                                                                                                                

There are ample applications of this theory in different fields of works, as we thrive to understand human behavior, it surprises us with already visible patterns to understand it more clearly. In sports , schemas can be understood as the affective response of the athlete to understand and maintain the interpersonal relatedness for and with the game. These  schemas serve as basis for understanding the sport world. These schemas are beliefs, feelings, expectations about oneself and the environment{ competitive performance env} in which we develop. These may lead to negative patterns of thoughts or feelings which are further reflected in our behavior, thus these reflections become maladaptive and can be seen as a warning signs of maladaptive behavior.