Brewer and Treyens (1981)

• Aim

  Investigate the role of schema in encoding and retrieval of episodic memory.
• Hypothesis

  (In accordance to the schema theory), people's prior experiences will influence how they remember new information
• Participaints

  86 psychology students
• Condition

  Participants were placed in an office room (it had many office-typical items but some typical items were removed, such as books, and some atypical items, such as a skull/toy top, were included). They were left alone but they did not know the study had begun.
• 30 participants carried out written recall and then verbal recognition; 29 participants carried out drawing recall; 27 carried out verbal recognition only.
• Data collection methods

  1. Recall condition: written description + booklet of all items (they were asked to rate based on how confident on whether the item had been in the room).
  2. Drawing condition: drawing the room and its objects.
  3. Verbal recognition: participants were read a list and they answered whether or not it had been in the room.
• When participants recalled through writing or drawing, they were more likely to recall office-congruent items (expected items) and incongruent items were often not recalled. However, they had a higher rate of remembering incongruent things through booklet recall.
• Result

  Schemas play a role in both the encoding and recall of the objects in the office.
• Strengths

  • High ecological validity
  • They did a test about the participants' schema (though not very thorough) prior to the test.
• Limitations

  • Deceptive - need debriefing
  • Needs a lot of setting up and difficult to replicate.