Schema Theory Strengths And Weaknesses

In the following examination, my aim is to make an appraisal of two theories of memory whilst weighing the strengths and weakness or limitations of each theory. The cognitive process I will be examining is memory. Memory can be defined as a faculty in the mind that stores and encodes information and is a vital essential to our lives. In order for the information we are receiving to become part of our memory, it has to to undergo three process. The three phases of turning information into memory are encoding process, in which we are transforming and organizing the information so that it can turn into a memory. It then goes through the storage process in which the memory then then becomes what we call short-term memory (SMS). Finally the retrieval process in which we recover or retrieve the stored memories so that we can apply it to our life. There has been a highly debated argument whether models and/or theories could properly demonstrate exactly

Schema theory itself has many strengths, such as there are a lot studies that support the theory. "The theory is useful for understanding how people categorize information, interpreted stories, make inferences and make logic among other things". (Crane, Hannibal 72). The theory equally has its weaknesses or limitations in respects to memory and overall approach of the theory. One of which is that the theory talks about memory being reconstructive, but there is no solid proof of it and it does not show any process of that. It also does not show us how people acquire said schemas, how those acquired schemas influence the cognitive process of people. Formations of peoples schemas can’t be tested, there is no way to prove how a certain someone creates a schema that is different that someone else. A weakness that is seen throughout is that the theory is too vague, that it is too unclear to be useful in