Schemas in Conversation

is a teacher, researcher, author, and legal consultant. She received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Nevada Reno in 1999 and is currently Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research focus is on criminal stereotypes and eyewitness memory and identification.

This book reviews literature and provides a theoretical rationale that cognition is inherently situated in a social context, and reports on an empirical test of this proposition. Specifically, individuals who varied on their schemas about college life (from very academically to very socially oriented) were placed in a situation in which they had to converse with another person about college. What they did not know was that the other person either held the same or different schema. Data were collected in the form of questionnaires and detailed analyses of the structure and content of the videotaped conversations. Results showed that the structure and content of their talk was affected by the schema composition of the conversing pair and that the schemas themselves were affected by the conversation. Discussion focuses on the theoretical and empirical value of conceptualizing schemas as situated.