AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -A schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. We use schemas because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of information that is available in our environment.

Detailed explanation-2: -Schemas (or schemata) are units of understanding that can be hierarchically categorized as well as webbed into complex relationships with one another. For example, think of a house. You probably get an immediate mental image of something out of a kid’s storybook: four windows, front door, suburban setting, chimney.

Detailed explanation-3: -Examples of schemata include mental models, social schemas, stereotypes, social roles, scripts, worldviews, heuristics, and archetypes.

Detailed explanation-4: -schema, in social science, mental structures that an individual uses to organize knowledge and guide cognitive processes and behaviour. People use schemata (the plural of schema) to categorize objects and events based on common elements and characteristics and thus interpret and predict the world.

Detailed explanation-5: -There are four types of these schemata, prototypes, personal construct, stereotypes, and scripts which we use to make sense of phenomena. One or all of these tools can be used to organize our perceptions in a meaningful way. The first of the schemata is known as a prototype.