Chapter 20:Role of the Reader's Schema in Comprehension, Learning and Memory

Chapter 20: Role of the Reader’s Schema in Comprehension, Memory and Learning
Richard C. Anderson

Anderson divides the chapter into four main headings:
1) A Schema-Theoretic Interpretation of Comprehension
2) Schema-Based Processes in Learning and Remembering
3) Evidence for Schema Theory
4) Implications of Schema Theory for design of materials and classroom instruction.

Introduction
· Anderson reports (1984) that schema theory has already been accepted by a majority of scholars in the field.
· “Schema” are defined as organized bodies of knowledge about the world.
· Schema provide bases for comprehending, learning and remembering ideas in stories and texts

· A Schema-Theoretic Interpretation of Comprehension
· Readers comprehend when they are able activate schema that satisfactorily explain and interpret the relationships among events and objects portrayed in a given sentence or passage.
· Certain sentences may contain straightforward syntax and familiar words. Yet those sentences may not make sense to the reader because the reader lacks the ability to interpret the interrelationships among the objects or events depicted in the sentence.
· Ex. “The notes were sour because the seam was split” would appear to be a
non-sequitur until the additional clue of “bagpipe” is provided.
· For comprehension to occur, It is not enough for the elements in a given sentence or passage to be “concrete and imageable”.
· What is critical for comprehension is a schema accounting for the relationships among these elements.
· When a reader is unable to discover a fitting schema, the sentence or passage is rendered incomprehensible.
· Schema applied to a given text depend on a reader’s culture: their age, sex, race, religion, nationality and occupation. Examples are given of persons in different occupations interpreting a given passage differently.
· The schema theory of comprehension posits that comprehension involves “activating or constructing a schema that provides a coherent explanation of objects and events mentioned in discourse.”
· The author sharply contrasts this theory with the “insufficiency” of the established view: that comprehension can be accounted for by simply “adding up” words in sentences, sentences in paragraphs, and paragraphs in narrative or expository prose.
· Comprehension occurs only when the reader has developed a schema that can satisfactorily explain the whole message.

· Schema-Based Processes in Learning and Remembering
· Schema theory posits that reading is an interactive process involving simultaneous analysis on many levels.
· The levels are: Graphophonemic, Morphemic, Semantic, Syntactic, Pragmatic, and Interpretive.
· “Bottom-up” (data-driven) processes are those that flow from the print.
· “Top-down” (hypothesis-driven) processes are those that come from the hypothesis the reader formulates.
· A reader’s schema affects learning and remembering of information and ideas.
· In 1978 Anderson and colleagues proposed six functions of schemata. They reported that precise models of schema-based systems were being tested by researchers through experimentation to determine their validity and viability. They suspected that some might not turn out to be reasonable or realistic.
· The six proposed functions of schemata are:
· 1) Schemata promote understanding by providing “niches” or “slots” for incoming textual information. Information that fits into these “slots” is learned more quickly.
· 2) Schemata enable the reader to determine important features of text. Once a reader knows what is important, (s)he can more readily decide where to focus attention.
· 3) Schemata allow the reader to make inferences, since no text is completely explicit.
· 4) Schemata allow the reader to systematically search and access memory for information learned in a text
· 5) Schemata contain important criteria, thereby allowing the reader to edit and summarize significant areas of text and to minimize insignificant information.
· 6) Schemata aid memory by allowing the reader to more easily reconstruct missing or forgotten pieces of textual information.
· Evidence for Schema Theory (Three Experiments)
· Anderson reports results of several experiments conducted to determine if there were evidence to support the claims of schema theory.
· One experiment was conducted on subjects of different ethnic or racial backgrounds, one involved subjects’ reading of closely comparable passages and a third involved assigning readers different roles or perspectives as they read a story or passage.
· The author explains that many of the claims of schema theory were borne out when Experiment #1 was conducted:
· Natives of India and Americans read letters about an Indian and an American wedding. Both cultures have extensive and well-developed marriage schema.
· Subjects spent less time reading their own native passage. (Expected because familiar schema expedite processing)
· Subjects recalled far more of their native texts verbatim and in paraphrase (Expected because culturally appropriate schema provide “slots” into which to fit new information, or because new information stored in memory is more accessible as schema facilitate searching memory)
· Far more “elaborations” (culturally appropriate extensions of text) were made as predicted by schema theory by each culture about its own customs.
· More “distortions” (inappropriate modifications of text) were made about the customs of the other culture as was expected by schema theory.
· Americans and Indians were more likely to regard different propositions as more important or significant (Americans with ritual and ceremony, and Indians with financial and social status) and would more easily recall those propositions more important to the schema developed in their cultural backgrounds.
· This was also confirmed (text more important to schema are more likely to be learned and remembered)
· A critical issue: can cultural variation within the US be a factor in reading comprehension?
· Minority children could suffer if stories, texts and test items assume a shared cultural perspective. When written material has an identifiable “cultural loading” there is a marked effect on comprehension.
· Example: “Sounding” (an exchange of friendly insults) is an activity found in the African-American community.
· In one study, A-A teenagers found a “sounding” episode to be friendly, while white peers perceived it as a potentially dangerous confrontation.
· In Experiment #2, Anderson, Spiro and Anderson (1978) conducted a study investigating three different schema theoretic hypotheses.
· Two groups of subjects were assigned closely comparable passages to read. (One passage concerned fine dining in a fancy restaurant; the other passage detailed a trip to a supermarket. The same 18 food and drink items were mentioned in both.)
· The group that read the passage containing the more constrained, structured, sequenced and cross-connected passage (the fine dining piece) were more easily able to recall the items (food and drink) mentioned in the passage in order.
· In addition, their more orderly search of memory enabled them to assign the items to the correct characters than did those readers of the more haphazard supermarket passage.
· This relates to schema function #1: “provision of ideational scaffolding”, and #3: “by tracing through the schema used to structure the text, the reader is helped to gain access to the particular information learned when the text was read.”
· In Experiment #3, Pichert and Anderson (1977) sought to prove that readers’ differing perspectives have independent effects on learning and recall.
· They manipulated reader schemata by assigning readers a story in which the readers assumed different perspectives: those of home buyers or those of burglars.
· Readers learned more of the information related to their assigned perspective.
· Readers who then switched perspectives recalled more previously unrecalled information important to their new perspective.
· Subjects reported that the previously unrecalled information now related to the new perspective simply “popped” into their heads.
· A related experiment conducted by the author used two measures of attention. Results confirmed that those readers assigned to be “burglars”, paid closer attention to “burglar-related” sentences.
· This bears out Schema function #2 which hypothesized that readers “use importance as one basis for allocating cognitive resources – that is, for deciding where to pay close attention.”
· Implications of Schema Theory for Design of Materials and Classroom Intervention
· The author offers five related suggestions for textbook publishers and curriculum designers:
· 1) Teaching manuals should include suggestions for helping children activate relevant background knowledge. Children do not automatically incorporate new material with what they may already know.
· 2) Teaching manuals should include suggestions for building children’s background knowledge when that background knowledge cannot be securely presumed.
· 3) Lesson activities should be featured in which children are given opportunities to integrate what they know with new material being presented. In this study, strong benefits are related to the use of prediction techniques. Children who used prediction as a strategy for recall remembered 72% of sentences, while control groups achieved only an average of 43% recall.
· 4) Publishers should use advance organizers or structured overviews to help students organize and “bridge the gap” between what they know and what they need to know.
· 5) Publishers and society need to be aware of and to address the potentially harmful effects of assuming that minority students’ schema match that of the majority culture. Since culture has such a strong effect on reading comprehension, it is not realistic to simply assume that every child will experience or comprehend text in the same way. This must be taken into account when texts are written.