The Schema in Cognition

Volume 3 - Issue 2

James F Welles*

Received: April 01, 2019;   Published: April 15, 2019

DOI: 10.32474/LOJMS.2019.02.000161

Full Text PDF

To view the Full Article   Peer-reviewed Article PDF

Abstract

The brain of an infant may be the blank tablet envisaged by Locke [1], but as it is shaped by both experience and language it develops into the mind of an adult. As the character of the maturing individual becomes defined, the mind shapes experiences decreasingly according to immediate stimuli themselves and increasingly according to linguistic interpretations of and emotional reactions to perceptions. Thus, the environment does not dictate human behavior but provides a context for its expression. The basis for interpreting environmental stimuli is the schema the cognitive program (Ger: Weltanschauung) which acts as a template for perceptual experience and provides expectations and explanations about objects and their relations to and interactions with each other [2]. It is populated by or constructed of memes [3], which are subjected to selection pressure by the psychocultural environment and thus are not necessarily as true as they are gratifying and popular. Just as a reigning intellectual paradigm defines each of our modern sciences (e.g., atoms in chemistry) [4], a schema defines the mental life of an individual by providing an intellectual frame of reference for information, ideas and behavior. Traceable back to Edmond Husserl’s phenomenological observation of the mind’s tendency to organize experiences [5], like Piaget’s mental structure [6], it comprises the “Cognitive map” of the individual’s reality and determines his

Introduction| References|