University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Cognitive Representation of Mundane Social Events

Trafimow, David Aaron

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/72121

Description

Title
The Cognitive Representation of Mundane Social Events
Author(s)
Trafimow, David Aaron
Issue Date
1993
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Wyer, Robert S., Jr.
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
  • Psychology, Social
  • Psychology, General
  • Psychology, Experimental
Abstract
An important issue in the event memory area concerns the effects of prior knowledge on how newly encountered event sequences become represented in memory. The following experiments address two relevant questions. First, when people encounter events that exemplify a schema, do they copy instantiations of schema-defining concepts into the representation they form? Second, when people encounter schema-unrelated events, do they encode these events separately, or do they associate them with events that exemplify the schema? I hypothesize that when people encounter events that exemplify a schema, they usually do not copy instantiations of schema-defining events into the representation they form. This happens only when a schema-unrelated event is encountered that requires knowledge of a defining event in order to localize the point in the overall sequence at which it occurred. Two experiments provided preliminary support for the theory. Four other experiments tested further its implications.
Graduation Semester
1993
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/72121

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