Blog Post 2: Schemas

Schemas are essential for a person’s cognitive development and plays a major role in children, as they are developing through childhood, and plays a large role in adults. The idea of schemas stems from Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget who studied how development of the mind occurs in stages as children experience different schemas. Schemas are aspects of the world. These aspects of the world are learned and developed by children and adults through experience. As children and adults learn new things every day from the environment, experiences are developed, which leads to the development of different schemas. There are schemas for everything we experience in the world. For example, according the picture below, social schemas include not eating garlic when on a date. Many people share the common respect of not eating garlic when going on a date because garlic smells and can create an awkward situation when intimacy occurs. Because many people have experienced the smell of garlic or have experienced being on a date when they or their partner has eaten garlic, that experience develops into schema of avoiding garlic before a date.  

As experiences continually occur, new schemas are developed and can modify or change old schemas. For example, growing up, my neighbor owned a Maltese puppy with whom I played with every day. This puppy had soft and white fur which I was obsessed with. Every time I held this puppy, I would embrace it and cherish its warm, fluffy fur. The puppy made me feel safe and secure because of how friendly and cute it was. However, one day when I was playing with the puppy, it became agitated and bit my leg. I was shocked that it bit me and began crying in pain; my parents rushed me to the doctor to make sure that I was safe. That moment changed my perception of my neighbor’s puppy and I no longer felt comfortable being around the puppy or any puppy that was of the same breed. This experience is a great example of how new experiences can change our schemas. Before the puppy bit me, my schema of Maltese puppies was that they were friendly, adorable, and gentle animals because of how positive my experience was with the puppy. However, my schema of Maltese puppies changed after experiencing a traumatic event at a young age. Suddenly, my schema of Maltese puppies was that they were dangerous and were not as cute and friendly as they appeared to be. My initial experience with the Maltese puppy and my new experience with the Maltese puppy caused my initial schema to be replaced with a newer schema. Schemas are created through experience and can change depending on the experience one has had.