Perceptual learning in pattern discrimination tasks with two and three schema categories

Free sorting with stimuli clustered in a multidlmensional attribute space

“…This follows because, as the number of schemata in a task approaches the number of preferred categories of a S, one would expect fewer schema classes to be subdivided into classes associated with subschemata or with variability levels. Brown and Evans (1969) have demonstrated that fewer "different" responses are made when three schemata are present in a same-different task than when only two schemata are present, a finding consistent with the above suggestion. A second implication of this suggestion is that variations in instructions (e.g., information as to how many schemata are present) may lead to better performance in comparison to the absence of this information because of fewer variations between the number of subject-defined categories and schema-defined categories.…”

Schematic memories develop quickly, but are not expressed unless necessary

“…Past uses of continuous retrieval reports have enabled researchers to distinguish the precision of episodic memories from their overall retrieval success 38,39 , reveal subtle memory deficits in healthy aging and in patients with altered MTL function 40 , and map separate neural contributions to different aspects of memory retrieval, such as precision, confidence, and vividness 41,42 . In contrast, most research in schematic memory tends to discretize memoranda as schema-consistent or not, using prior knowledge that participants already know, like famous faces, word pairs that are semantically related word pairs, or dot patterns that resemble letters [43][44][45] , although there are numerous exceptions 11,16,17,31 . Despite these differences, we find that images that are closer to their category's central location are more precisely remembered relative to ones that are farther away, consistent with many past observations that schemas facilitate memory for consistent information 46,1,47,48,45 .…”

“…However, the slow development of schemas is difficult to reconcile with observations that schemas can form rapidly and are used simultaneously with, or soon after, the encoding of its constituent episodes. Indeed, some of the earliest observations of schematic memory come from perception research, operationalizing a schema as a common set of spatial properties across visual displays that participants learn and use within minutes 15,16 . Furthermore, newly developed schemas have been shown to influence novel, schema-consistent memories during and immediately after encoding the memories that make up the schema 17,12,14 .…”

Schematic concept formation: Feature measures and constraint redundancy as predictors

“…This study was designed to provide similar data for a categorization task that Evans (I 967b) has labeled schematic concept formation (SCF) and that has been investigated in a series of studies in his laboratory (Brown & Evans, 1969;Brown, Walker, & Evans, 1968Edmonds & Mueller, 1968;Edmonds, Mueller, & Evans, 1966;Evans, 1964;Evans & Arnoult, 1967;Ranken & Evans, 1968).…”