The cognitive schemas (or simply "schemas") are the basic units with which the brain organizes the information it possesses. These patterns allow one to understand what is perceived from the environment, about oneself or what is done, while allowing memory and learning to occur..
Some might confuse schemas with dictionary definitions or concepts, but cognitive schemas are simpler and more complex at the same time. While it will not be easy for any subject to write a definition of a concept as simple as that of "chair", everyone has a mental scheme with which they represent that object.
It is this representation of the object that will allow a chair to be recognized when viewed, not to be confused with another type of object, which can be used, drawn, created, etc. The chair in front of you is real and unique, while the outline is just a general representation of all the chairs. Or at least of the known.
Human beings have cognitive schemas about practically everything they have experienced in their life and everything they have interacted with. These schemas are not static, but they communicate with each other, feed back, change and are refined. It is clear that they are complex and very valuable structures.
This article will explain in detail everything related to cognitive schemes: what are their functions, their main characteristics and the types of existing schemes. In view of the variety of perspectives on this topic, the most universal vision of it will be taken.
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There are six main functions of cognitive schemes, although various authors have mentioned other uses for this resource. Below are the most common among the different researchers on the subject.
The center of all cognitive activity is to process the information that is received every second, either to give it a usefulness or to discard it..
From this point of view, the schemas offer a frame of reference to assimilate all the new information. What is already outlined gives meaning and support to the new information to be processed.
Processing information is energy costly for the brain. Therefore, it is necessary to have cognitive resources in the most efficient way possible..
Each person's schemas allow them to classify new information according to its relevance, directing attention only to what is useful..
Not all new information to which a subject is exposed has a reference system suitable for understanding. On many occasions, there will be information gaps or a lack of context. There the schemes come into play, giving meaning to the implicit, by finding relationships between different ideas or concepts..
On many occasions, the new information that a person accesses does not come to them by chance, but they look for it voluntarily.
Without blueprints of what to look for, the process would be confusing, vague, and disorganized at best. The related diagrams will guide the information search process.
Schemas are themselves synthetic forms of information. They are conceived as the minimum units of information.
Therefore, when trying to process complex information, the previous cognitive schemes will allow distinguishing the main ideas from the secondary and complementary ideas, facilitating their ranking and summary..
It is common that, when trying to process new information, the subject encounters lapses in memory or forgetfulness, which make it difficult to understand and assimilate said information.
The usefulness of the previous schemes, in these cases, is high, since they allow to test hypotheses that help to generate or regenerate these concepts..
Without going much deeper into the subject, it is clear that cognitive schemas are highly functional and are omnipresent in all phases of information processing and storage.
It would be necessary to know, now, its main characteristics, to understand how all of the above works.
Some of the characteristics of cognitive schemes can be understood based on what has already been said in previous paragraphs.
For example, schemas are considered high-level cognitive units, insofar as they are entities with a high degree of complexity, in turn composed of much simpler elements..
From the above it can also be inferred that cognitive schemes are multifunctional. They have a function in each of the cognitive processes: sensory perception, attention, information processing, memory, learning, problem solving, etc..
Thus, the characteristics of the schemes that are not directly derived from the above will be explained in more detail below..
Namely: they fit and connect with each other, have variables and various levels of abstraction and allow learning at different levels.
Schema theory makes it clear that schemas are not alone in the cognitive system. Each of them is part of a complex framework, which is dynamic and gives each scheme a greater utility. The networks with which each scheme connects will change according to the particular needs of each case.
Thus, to continue with the same example, the chair scheme is associated with a more general one, that of seating, while chairs are forms of seating. But on a more specific level it will also be related to the baby chair scheme, as the latter is a particular form of chair..
In the same way, each schema of a type will have connections to other schema types. For example, the chair scheme, which is visual, will be related to the scheme of how to sit or other more specific ones (how to sit in a gala restaurant), which is a situational scheme.
These connection possibilities are latent as long as they are not needed. For example, if the objective is only to distinguish a basic chair, the simplest scheme will suffice; but if someone asks for "a chair or something similar" the scheme with its more complex associations will be activated immediately.
When a schema is young (that is, it was created recently), it will not have many connections (as with children).
However, as more experimentation is done with it, more associations will emerge, refining the scheme. For example, when you learn that an electric chair is another type of chair.
As already seen in the last point, a general scheme contains other more specific ones. The more general a schema is, the more variable elements it will have; and the more specific, the more fixed elements will compose it. In the same way, as a schema is refined, its fixed elements are changed by variables.
When you are a child, for example, you can believe that a fixed element of every chair is that it must have four legs, because that is what the scheme says.
When more models of chairs are known, it will be discovered that this is a variable element, since some chairs will have more or fewer legs, and there will even be chairs that do not have any..
In the same way, the seating scheme will have many variable elements, as it is very general, while sitting in an ergonomically correct posture is composed almost entirely of fixed components, being a very specific scheme. Of course, this will vary between cultures, times, and authors. There are your variables.
The premise that a cognitive schema has variable and fixed components is the one that allows the greatest number of objects, situations and possible learning to be represented with very few schemas..
This characteristic, added to the previous one, is what returns to low-cost energy resource schemes for our brain.
From the above, it follows that the schemes have various levels of abstraction. This has to do directly with how general or specific they are, or how many connections they have with other schemes. The fewer connections you have or the more general it is, the more abstract it will be.
Within this characteristic of the schemes, it is understood that for each category of information there will be a primitive or nuclear model. This would be the scheme on which you cannot abstract anymore.
Thus, seats are types of furniture, chairs and benches are forms of seats, while folding chairs are forms of chair..
However, all the previous patterns would be adjusted to that of "object", which would be the nuclear scheme, since there is no other more generic or more abstract.
This hierarchical structure allows the organization of cognitive schemas in a kind of schema tree, for easy interaction and use..
As already explained, the schematics are representations of elements of reality. Thus, a schema is not the same as a definition, since they more adequately represent the knowledge that one has about an aspect of reality than the definitions themselves..
That is, a scheme is personal and has a direct connection with experience, while definitions are based on collective agreements..
While schemas are transferable and many people may have similar schemas for the same concept, each is most likely perfectly unique..
The learning processes follow these same principles. Something is considered to have been learned when it has been made one's own, not just when it has been memorized or repeated according to a pattern. For a content to be learned, it is necessary to create, feed, adjust or restructure the different associated schemes.
Thus, the first mechanism for schema learning is growth. This refers to the incorporation of new information that conforms to the previous models. Like when someone learns that wheelchairs are also forms of chairs.
The second mechanism for learning would be adjustment. Here the schema is refined, modified or evolves based on the new information.
According to the previous example, the chair scheme is adjusted from "fixed object on the ground" to "fixed object on the ground or with moving elements". And now it would also serve to move.
The last mechanism for learning would be restructuring and with this new schemes would be formed on the basis of existing ones. For example, starting with the chair and bed schematics, a person could restructure their extendable beach chair schema, changing it to the bed schema, which is more suitable for them..
Once the functions and characteristics of cognitive schemes are known, it would be necessary to understand what their different types are, to have the complete basis and to understand this complex component..
In this section, the five types of existing schemes will be explained, according to the most common definitions:
They are the schemes that are had on the different sensory stimuli. Continuing with the same example of the chair, we have a semantic scheme of what a chair is; that is, made up of words. But this scheme is also associated with a visual one, where the visual elements of a chair are stored.
The same thing happens with the other senses. There is a scheme about what is a good or bad smell or taste, a sweet smell or taste, the smell or taste of the apple and even the smell or taste of a specific dish. There are also diagrams about the sounds (bass, treble, meows, the voice of a singer), textures (smooth, rough, own sheets).
Within this type of scheme, the visuals are the most common and the easiest to systematize or verbalize..
It is more difficult for the average subject, to make another understand what their scheme of a flavor, a smell or a texture is like, especially the more generic it is. Be that as it may, there are countless sensory schemes that exist.
These are the schemes related to concrete actions that can be carried out. It had already been anticipated, in a previous example, that the schemes on how to sit in a habitual way or in a fancy restaurant were of a situational type. These types of schemes apply to any action that can be carried out by humans, whether or not it has been carried out..
For example, you can have an outline of how football is played, even if it is only seen on television and has never been played..
In the same way, many people have schemes of how to act in the face of certain natural disasters, even if they have never experienced one. They are all useful schemes for performing specific behaviors.
These schemes are generally structured in the form of flowcharts or algorithms. For simple actions such as brushing your teeth, your representation is easily assimilated and transferable.
The most complex ones, generally the social ones, for example how to find a partner, can have almost infinite variables.
This type of mental structure refers to the formal knowledge that one has on certain topics and allows interacting with its elements, establishing causal relationships, detecting errors and much more.
The aforementioned example of what a chair is would be a domain scheme. But there are many other cases of a more complex type.
For example, the diagram on the phases of the rain cycle should not be confused with a situational diagram because it is not an action that can be carried out by man. In the same vein, knowing how a car is manufactured would be a domain scheme if it only focuses on basic knowledge, and situational if it is based on replicating the process.
A writer has situational schemas about, for example, how a good story is written. This pattern applies when you type. But when this writer reads a story by another author, allowing him to distinguish whether it is a good story or not are his mastery schemes on the subject. It is understood that, for a similar context, the types of schemes vary.
A final difference between this type of schema and the situational is that while the situational organizes and directs human behavior, the domain schema organizes and directs its discourse..
Thanks to domain schemes, the person can express what he knows and how he knows it in a congruent and understandable way.
They are the schemes that are had on each of the components of social life. It could also be confused with situational schemas, since many of the situations that are schematized are of a social nature, but both refer to different pieces of information within the social context..
In social schemes, for example, information is stored on each known person, and even on the types of people that can be known.
Thus, you have an outline about each member of the family, friend or colleague and even about celebrities and public figures, but also about what, for example, a miser is..
In this way, one would speak of a situational scheme, for example, if the information is about how to handle a conversation with someone intolerant.
However, the above example would be a social one if it focused on what an intolerant person is like. Finally, it would be a dominance scheme if it focused on the sociological bases of intolerance.
These schemas also store information on social conventions (for example, gratitude as a positive value), social roles (what does a policeman, a lawyer, an astrologer do), gender (for example, what is male), age, creed and much more; as well as social goals (what is understood by a full life).
Finally, they allow us to understand social issues from a personal perspective. For example, what does each one understand by love or friendship (how they feel it within themselves, instead of how much theory they know on the subject). All this allows the subject to integrate effectively into their society, maintaining their mental health..
Finally, there are the self-concept schemes, which refer to all the information that each person handles about himself..
Some authors consider it a more specific type of social scheme, while the self is framed in the social, and what is cannot be separated so easily from the social context that surrounds it..
For example, in the theory of mind, it is conceived that the subject creates schemes about how their mental processes work (for example, sadness), but understands that these mental processes, although unique and non-transferable, work in the same way in the others. Thus, understanding your own sadness allows you to understand that of the other and interact.
In an extensive way, each subject has a scheme about each of their social roles, which will allow them to understand that of the others..
Thus, it will have a scheme of gender, creed, ideology, social function, etc. From here, self-concept, self-esteem, sense of belonging and more will emerge..
The human has the ability to elaborate schemes about his mental processes. From this perspective, metacognition (the cognition of cognitive processes) is a type of self-concept scheme. Thanks to this, the person can know how he learns best, how good a memory he has, etc..
These would be, then, the bases of the functioning and typification of the cognitive schemes. It was not mentioned in this article how to create a cognitive schema from scratch, or what happens when you have incorrect or distorted schemas, or how you can eliminate or repair such errors.
Schema theory, as it adjoins so many other cognitive processes, is highly complex and its full understanding requires a greater deployment than that presented in this introductory article..
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