So schemas, we've talked about many times, we'll continue to talk about because it does
seem that human cognition is very much based upon categorical thinking and being able to
sort things into categories quickly to make really efficient judgments. They're not always
accurate judgments, but they're efficient, they allow us to process information quickly,
move through our environment fluidly, and adapt to situations very rapidly, and those
are usually advantages, unless we accidentally do something wrong in our cognitive processing
that harms somebody else or ourselves in a way that we were not aware we could have controlled,
because schemas are largely implicit, I could get you to think about your schemas but you
don't usually think about your schemas, they just operate. When I say 'can,' I don't usually
think, 'well what's my schema for 'can.' right? It's just an automatic category, implicit
memory, applied to a stimulus that I am now able to identify in my working memory by pulling
the concept 'can,' out of my long term memory, right? So schemas, we have already talked
about when we were talking about Piaget and the cognitive stages of development, I gave
you the ideas of assimilation and accommodation. The ideas of having a category for cat, a
category for dog, a category for animal, a category for non-animal, living, non-living,
we develop category, after category, after category that we then use to actually interact
and perceive our world, and sensation and perception are different things, keeping in
mind that we never just actually perceive raw data. We always edit that data as it's
perceived. The sensations are transduced into neural impulses, which then we read or model
as the reality we believe we are experiencing. So there's some editing that goes on in that
and we do it in ways that we're not aware of, so that's the implicit memory. Script
is a schema for an event. So, much like you'd have a script for a movie or a sitcom,
and it tells you exactly how things go to film that, we have that for most of our common
activities. So eating out has a script to it. You go to the restaurant, right? You open
the door, you look for... a sign that says what? 'Wait to be seated,' or 'seat yourself,'
right? That's part of the script. So we go in, if it says 'wait to be seated,' then we
wait for somebody to approach us, we don't then go seat ourselves, right? They approach
us, then we say, you know, here's the menus, the person may or may not be our waiter who
gives us the menus, it might be the host or hostess, right? And then we start reading our menus, somebody
comes and then 'takes our drink orders,' then they come back and get our food orders, then
they go away again and they bring our food back, we dine on it, then they say 'well would
you like dessert?' And you say 'yes,' or 'no.' You then get the bill, and you go pay, and
that's the script for eating out. And it's weird if anybody violates that script and
most people don't because that's the implicit operation for how to have dinner out. Me personally,
for whatever weird reason of my own, I couldn't really give you a really good reason, but
I like to eat dessert first. I like to order dessert. So, I get seated, and I look, and
I go 'wow, chocolate cake with fudge on it, yep, that's me.' And I say when the person
comes back to take the drink orders, I'll say, 'can I go ahead and get one of these
sundaes, or one of these desserts right now?' And what I usually get is a giggle, or a laugh,
or a smile. Because why? I violated the script. I'm asking for something earlier than I'm
supposed to ask for it, and sometimes I get people who are a little incredulous, they're
like, 'oh, you're serious? Do you want it now?' I'm like 'yea, if you don't mind, I would
like to have that as my appetizer.' That's how I've learned to say it, I need to say
that I want the dessert as an appetizer. If I say that, I'm very likely to get it. If
I don't say I want the dessert as an appetizer, I'm very likely not to get it. And people
will bring me my food, and I'll go, 'oh where's the hot fudge sundae?' And they're like, 'oh
you were really serious about that?' Because they weren't convinced. They think I'm kidding.
I'm off script for a joke going, 'nah.' And they're like, 'I'm very sorry about that!'
And they'll laugh or they'll apologize, I'm like, 'that's cool, I understand human cognitive
processing.' If I want to go to Wendy's and get a jr. bacon cheeseburger, without cheese,
I've learned the best way to order that is a jr. bacon burger without cheese. If I say
jr. bacon cheeseburger without cheese, more often than not I wind up with a jr. bacon
cheeseburger. Why? It's the script. It's what they automatically do because implicitly involved
in all of their daily transactions and food service is a way things normally go, and unless
you do something to highlight the attention to the fact that you're off script, they'll
just go on with script. Not because there's something wrong with them, that's normal human
cognitive processing. In fact, it biases the way we remember things. Because some people
go, 'oh I forgot to do that!' Why do they forget? Probably not because I said it, they
remembered everything else, right? But because it was off script. So what we find is, and
this is old, old, reseach that goes way back, we can mis-remember things in way that
is more consistent with our dominantly held world view, and that is, looking at 1932 Bartlett
had people read unusual stories. So, not something you'd usually read, and then recalled details
from the stories. So not typical news stories, but they're
different stories and then people would recall the stories and he had already surveyed them
about their own political views, religious views, etc., etc., and what he found is
they would remember consistent with what they already believed the case to be in their own
world. In fact, you can bias memory pretty easily and lawyers are trained to do this.
Elizabeth Loftus showed the fallacies involved with eyewitness testimony. Eyewitness testimony
is something our entire justice system relies on, so I hope you see the practical value
of some of this knowledge. We rely on people to give a factual account of what happened
when they're under oath, right, on the witness stand. And what she was able to do, and has
done, and still does is research memory in such a way that in one particular early study,
she showed two different groups of people the exact same film, and then she asked each
group the same questions with one word changed. And one group, so you had the same film, two
cars came together, I'll just say 'two cars came together.' Alright, and one group, they
get asked the question, 'how fast were the cars going when they bumped into each other?'
And 'did you see any shattered glass?' And then the other group they asked, 'How fast were
the cars going when they smashed into each other?' And 'did you see any shattered glass?'
And the people asked the smash question, one word changed, reliably reported higher average
speeds when the cars collided, and they were far more likely to say that they saw shattered
glass. But here's the thing, there was no shattered glass. They edited their own memories,
not in a way where they were deliberately deceiving themselves, but they remembered
as a fact a detail that did not occur because it was consistent with the stimulus presented
to them just before they recalled it. And she's done a lot since then to bring into
sharp focus some questions we all ought to have about the reliability of eyewitness
testimony. Because the people who get up there are not lying, they swear to tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and they are remembering to the best
of their ability, and the more they are pressed to remember something over and over, or re-
tell it over and over, the more convicted they become that it is the accurate, reliable,
objective truth. But if you ask somebody else who saw the same thing they'll have a slightly
different perception. Another person, there used to be an old thing that I won't do here,
especially post 9/11, psychology experiment that we do in class, two people come running
in out of nowhere, and they get into a big argument. One would reach up and start doing
this to the other person, and that person would fall down, and then you would ask people
what they saw individually. And most people would reply that they saw a knife, and that
the guy was stabbed. But it isn't a knife, it's a banana. But they don't see banana,
their script and their schema says that when you see that kind of altercation, it's a knife.
When you hear the word 'smash,' it implies shattered glass, and their memory supplies details
that were not present, but which they believe at that point were absolutely present. And
that's fascinating, if you think about it.