A slug is fed a novel food, and then it is injected with a chemical that causes it to regurgitate. From only this one learning experience, it will immediately react to every future taste of this food by regurgitating. [Calvin, 1986]
A rat is trained to press a lever for food. If it receives food every time that it presses the lever, it will learn much faster than if it is only intermittently reinforced.
A rat is trained to press a lever for food. Randomly, however, it receives a shock rather than food when it presses the lever. If this is the only food source, the rat will continue to press the lever, but it is likely to develop irrational behavior (e.g., biting its handler) in other respects.
Emotional content and conflict enhance schema formation and memory:
Consider two nearly identical physics lectures on ballistics. The only difference is that the instructor begins one by silently loading a gun and placing it on the lectern so that it is visible to the students throughout the lecture. Which class will remember ballistics better?
A schema may include non-relevant aspects, particularly those neural patterns that happened to be flowing during the first experience of the schema. Thus is superstition born, and in Chapter 4 we discussed the associated inductive fallacy of ‘hasty generalization.’ Non-relevant aspects, once established in the schema, are slow to disappear if one is not consciously aware of them. For example, a primary aim of psychotherapy is identification of behavior patterns formed in childhood and no longer appropriate. Deliberate schema modification can backfire:
I once decided to add some enjoyment to the chore of dish washing by playing my favorite record whenever I washed dishes. It helped for a while, but soon I found that listening to that music without washing dishes seemed more like work than like recreation. I had created an associative bridge between the two sets of neural patterns, so that each triggered the emotional associations of the other.
Identification of a pattern does not require an exact match with the schema. Because we are identifying the schema holistically rather than by listing its components, we may not notice that some components are missing. Nor are extra, noncharacteristic components always detected. For example, people tend to overlook aspects of their own lives that are inconsistent with their current self-image [Goleman, 1992b]. The conditioned schema of previous experiences adds the missing component or ignores the superfluous component.
Memory can replay one schema or a series of schemata without any external cues, simply by activating the relevant neural pathways. Memory recollects the holistic schema that was triggered by the original experience; it does not replay the actual external events. Missing or overlooked elements of the schema are ignored in the memories. Thus eyewitness testimony is notoriously poor. Thus scientists trust their written records much more than their recollections of an experiment. Neural pathways are reinforced by any repeat flow -- real or recalled. Each recollection has the potential of modifying a memory. I may think that I am remembering an incident from early childhood, but more likely I am actually recalling an often-repeated recollection rather than the initial experience. Recollection can be colored by associated desire. Some individuals are particularly prone to selfserving memory, but everyone is affected to some degree. Thus, when I described the first football game near the start of this chapter, I said:
“I prefer to think that our team was inspired by this event, that we stopped the opponents’ advance just short of a touchdown, and that we recovered the ball and drove for the winning touchdown. Indeed, I do vaguely remember that happening, but I am not certain.”
