Schema-driven Memory and Structural Alignment

In the 1960s and 70s, researchers paid a great deal of attention to schematic memory, or memory for thematic information. In the 1980s and 90s, this research ground to a halt, in large part because researchers lacked a strong theoretical framework for the study of schematic memory. We suggest that structure-mapping theory, a theory of analogy and similarity comparisons, may provide such a framework. We conduct two experiments designed to replicate classic findings from the schematic memory literature that memory for schema-relevant information is better than that for schema-irrelevant information, and that information in a schema can intrude on memory for instances using a paradigm from work in analogical reasoning. Because we can replicate schema-driven findings in an analogy paradigm, we should be able to use what we know about analogy to understand schematic memory.