The Role Of Schemas In Understanding Places

Walking into an unfamiliar building, we quickly know, for example, not only that it is a restaurant, but also what kind of a restaurant it is, what kind of people we are likely to find there and how they are likely to and ‘supposed’ to act (1). We are able to differentiate between customers and employees, have an idea about the location of the restrooms, the kind of food served and even the cost of eating there without talking to anyone and in seconds! Often we can answer many of these questions even before entering the building (Cherulnik, 1991). Although we practice this “guessing game” all the time, because it comes to us so naturally, we do not even notice what we are achieving. We are able to achieve this by virtue of our mental representations called schemas.