Essentially, a schema is your generalized knowledge about a situation or event, which leads you to expect things to be a certain way.^[1] Additionally, you are likely to notice and remember things that fit your schema, and the reverse, to notice and remember things that are so unusual that they stand out.

For example, when you go to the grocery store, you have a schema for what the interior of the store looks like and what kind of objects and experiences to expect there. You expect the store to be laid out in aisles devoted to certain types of products; you expect the sales clerks to give you knowledgeable advice on where to go when you ask for directions; you expect to save money through certain types of savings programs; and so on. In turn, this schema helps you navigate the store as you become familiar with where things are. When there are changes, as when products are moved to another shelf or aisle, you may feel disoriented. Or you may feel annoyed if someone behaves in an unexpected way, such as if a clerk is short with you when you ask for directions, or if a clerk hovers too closely in giving you directions.

Schemas also help you remember new information, since they create a structure into which you can add related material. That’s what helps experts better remember new material in their field; they incorporate it into a schema they already have. For instance, if you are a car enthusiast, you can easily remember details about new models and be able to distinguish them from other models. But someone who doesn’t know about cars will find it hard to remember what’s new and different about the latest model, much less compare it to other models. In fact, all sorts of cars may fuzz together in the novice’s mind, so he or she can only remember broad distinctions, such as two-door, four-door; hard-top, convertible; sedan, convertible, station wagon, and SUV; and color. Likewise, if you don’t know much about birds, you may only remember that you saw a small, dark bird on your porch yesterday, but someone who has studied about birds may pay attention to and remember such details as the bird’s coloring, tail and wing formation, bill size, song if any, and even note its exact species and name.

Having a schema thus helps you fit new information into a structure of knowledge you already have. So you not only are more observant about what you see, but you can better encode that observation into that structure and therefore better remember.

As for scripts, these are a type of schema that features a simple, well-structured sequence of events in a specified order that you associate with a very familiar activity that occurs over a certain period of time,^[2] like when you go to a restaurant. You go in, wait in line until the hostess seats you, then a waiter comes over to greet you, you look at the menu, you place your order, you have a conversation with the person you are with, eat your dinner, leave a tip, pull out a credit card, and sign for your bill.

One way to use a schema or script for memory improvement is to consciously create a schema for acquiring new knowledge and remember the overall structure you have created. Then you can better incorporate new knowledge and therefore remember what you learn.

For example, when I first took a birding class, I didn’t know very much about different types of birds. I just knew the names for familiar birds, like crows, robins, ostriches, parrots, and penguins. But I didn’t know anything about the different families of birds, such as the categories for waterfowl (like geese, ducks, gulls, herons) or raptors, like hawks, falcons, kites, eagles, and vultures. However, rather than have us remember lists of different birds—over 100 common species in the California Bay Area alone—our instructor gave us an organizational method to use in which we should first look at the general characteristics of the bird, such as size of bird, bill size and shape, behavior, colors, songs and calls or other vocalizations, habitat, flight pattern, and how many birds are together. We used this information to identify the bird’s family (e.g., owls), and then looked for more specific details to distinguish different types of owls, such as a barn owl, which is a small owl with a pale monkey face that looks something like an alien from another planet; a great horned owl, which is a large owl with ear tufts that look like the horns of a devil; and a burrowing owl, which is a small owl with long legs and ear tufts. This way, rather than having to remember all the birds individually, we could place them within a hierarchical structure for easier identification.

Using a Schema to Remember What Happened

Having an overall schema for an event or experience can also help you remember what happened there, as you call up your schema and seek to reconstruct what happened, where, and when. For example, say you have a schema for going to a club with friends to listen to music. This schema may not be conscious for you, if you haven’t thought about it before. But as you reflect on the overall experience, you may come up with your own series of common activities (i.e., you arrive, pay an entrance fee, go to the bar, take some drinks to the table, observe a series of acts perform, talk to your friends, dance, etc.).

One way this schema of what you generally do or your script for a particular evening can be especially useful is if you are trying to remember something later, such as where you were likely to have put down your keys. As you visualize the schema or script in your mind, you can see yourself as you go through different activities in order, rather than rushing around from place to place where you might have been. Just visualize in your mind going from one place to another in the order in which you normally do that activity. That way, you may recall where you placed the object and you can make a beeline to your lost object.

Or as you imagine the sequence mentally, go backwards to reconstruct the steps, so you remember the latest action, what you did before that, and so on, until you are back to where you were when you misplaced the item. However, when you do retrace your steps backwards, you may be calling on your logical mind to help you remember things in reverse order, which is harder to do. Generally, it is easier and more effective to simply go with the original flow. In fact, you may sometimes find what you are looking for without thinking about it—as if by calling up a script for a particular sequence of activities, you have tapped into the power of your unconscious mind. This will take you where you want to go as if you are on automatic, and voila, there are the keys, the cell phone, or whatever else you are looking for.

Calling up a schema or script might also help you more clearly remember particular conversations you had at a particular time. You literally see yourself having that conversation and that helps to trigger your memory of what was said.

Designing your own schema for something you have learned can also help you retain this information in your memory. One approach is to create an outline for the material, if you haven’t already been given one, such as when you do an interview with someone and want to remember what was said. If you are taking notes at the time, you might jot down some trigger words to create the outline. If you are trying to remember later, focus on recalling the general topics first; then fit the details under those. You can create such an outline in a linear format (i.e., 1, 1a and 1b, 2, 2a, 2b, 2c, and so on).

You also can set up your outline in a graphic format so it becomes essentially a mind map, with subtopics branching off from the main topic, and then sub-subtopics branching off these. For example, a graphic outline might look something like this. Then, by remembering the main categories in the outline, you can better remember all of the details.

Using a schema can be a good way to recall information, particularly information that fits the schema, so you expect it to be there. For example, say you are reporting on an event or experience. If you remind yourself to pay close attention at the time and then later call up a visual image of what you observed, your schema (which includes your expectations of what is there) will give you mental triggers so you are able to remember in more detail. That’s because of the process of selection, which leads you to more accurately recall information that is consistent with a particular schema—something that fits in, such as noticing and recalling calculators and record books on the desk of a bank officer.

For example, two psychologists tried an experiment asking people to recall what they remembered about a psychologist’s office where they were recently waiting for a few minutes. Most people remembered what was consistent with their schema for such an office—such as the desk and chair—but few remembered the unusual items—such as a wine bottle, coffee pot, and picnic basket—because these were inconsistent with the schema.^[3]

One danger is that in trying to be consistent with your schema, you may recall things that weren’t actually there, though you may think they were. For instance, in the experiment described above, about a half dozen participants remembered items that weren’t in the room—such as books—because typically books would be in such an office.^[4] It’s the same reason why eyewitnesses in a criminal case might remember things that weren’t there—such as thinking a person talking in a threatening manner was holding a gun—because it’s consistent with their knowledge or expectations,.

Thus, while most of the time a schema can help you accurately retrieve information, there are times when you might feel certain you remembered something correctly, but in fact you were mistaken—because you are recalling things based on your prior knowledge and expectations, not what was actually there.

On the other hand, you may be more apt to notice and remember something that is very unusual, because it is inconsistent with an ordinary schema, such as when someone who is dressed inappropriately appears at an event. In such a situation, you may remember quite accurately, because you pay closer attention, since you have been jarred out of operating on automatic—the way you more typically record everyday schemas that fit your usual expectations.

Another time for caution is when you try to recall conversations because of a memory process that psychologists call “abstraction,” where you store what the message means but not the exact words or sentence structure.^[5] You may think you have recalled a conversation correctly, but commonly you store the gist of the message or its general meaning. Another source of error is that you might combine various facts together in your memory. Once you do this, you cannot separate them into what you originally heard or observed, so you can’t recall exactly the original.^[6] This phenomenon of not being able to distinguish thoughts from what you actually experienced might be particularly important when you are claiming you had a verbal agreement with someone and you each remember that agreement differently. This is a good reason to write any agreement down and not leave it to memory; your memory could be wrong, just as the other party’s could be, but you each are equally certain that you are right.

A way to counteract this source of memory error is to pay careful attention to the exact words in a particular sentence, since you can strategically control your attention. When you do pay close attention, psychologists have found, your memory can be quite accurate.^[7] Obviously, this kind of attention isn’t merited for everything you hear; it would be mentally overtaxing to try to continually focus your attention on everything. But if you selectively pick out what you want to attend to more closely, you will be able to remember that.

As an exercise, try carefully paying attention to something you hear or read. To be able to check your accuracy, record what you hear on a tape recorder or cassette recorder so you can play it back. Then, work on remembering a sentence and afterwards listen to the tape again or look at what was written. Count how many words out of the total you got right and divide the total words by that number to get a percentage score. You will find your percentages will be higher for shorter sentences, lower for longer ones. But as you practice paying attention and remembering, your percentages reflecting your ability to remember should increase.

Try testing yourself with shorter sentences (i.e., 5–10 words) first; then try longer sentences (i.e., 11–15 words); and then still longer ones (i.e., 16–20 words). You will find that your percentages should increase for each category. As for the usual guideline about only being able to remember seven plus or minus two items (the “Magic Number Seven,” discussed in Chapter 1), you can remember more when you are working with sentences, because they have meaning and you also have grammatical rules to guide you—essentially a language schema that helps you remember meaningful sentences that make sense to you.

Another caution is about remembering inferences or logical interpretations and conclusions that were not part of the original information you received. This can occur because your own interests and background can shape what you remember; they can also lead you to add additional information to what you have seen or heard.^[8] Then, too, you may use a process known as “reconstruction” to fill in missing details based on your expectations about what should be there. For example, you may recall who was in a staff meeting and think that one person who is normally there was present, when, in fact, that person wasn’t there on that day. In everyday life, such reconstructions often are correct, but not always.

Do you remember the classic game of “rumor” (sometimes called “telephone”), which you probably played during your childhood? One person starts the rumor by whispering a sentence or two to the next person in line; that person repeats the message to the next person; and so on down the line, until the last person announces aloud what he or she heard. Then the first person says what he or she said in the beginning. Usually, there is a great difference between what was originally stated and what the last person says, resulting in much hilarity.

Well, the same thing can happen in everyday life, such as when one person shares a story over the water cooler and another person hears it and passes it on. Typically, what happens is that each person will recall the gist of the story and may then add his or her own additional information and inferences in telling the story to the next person, who will then do the same in passing the story on. So what may start out as a simple statement that an employee is leaving the company may turn into a drama about how that employee is leaving because he or she doesn’t like working there and had a fight with the boss.

To experiment with this process, get a few friends or business associates together and use the structure of the game of rumor, except instead of just a sentence or two, take about a minute to start a story with some details. Include information about the person’s job, work activities, and an incident that occurs affecting that person and others in the company. Record what you have stated, so you are able to play it back at the end. Then, the next person similarly tells the story to another person, trying to capture the same kind of drama and detail as in the story they heard. Finally, at the end, the last person tells the story to the whole group. After that, replay the original story, and notice the differences. What got conveyed accurately? What got changed? What kind of additional information was added? What was added that was consistent with the original story? What was added that was inconsistent, but may reflect the experiences and outlook of someone in the group who added that information?

In short, use your experience with telling the story to help you better understand your own memory processes and those of others in using schemas and scripts.