Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

These are schemas (knowledge structures) that describe the typical sequence of events in common situations. People have scripts for such varied social situations as eating in a restaurant, attending a lecture, or being ill. Scripts include behaviors (e.g., being seated), roles (e.g., waiters), and props (e.g., menus). As schemas, scripts help people use prior knowledge to set up expectations about what kinds of behaviors will follow, relate details to a general pattern, and fill in missing information ( Schank & Abelson, 1977 ). Scripts, like schemas, favor coherence, so information inconsistent with a script is surprising and often elaborated by the perceiver. The unique feature of scripts is that they are temporal, often including causal statements. Scripts also specify enabling conditions that precede a script (e.g., being hungry and having money) or occur within it (e.g., contacting the waiter to get the menu), as well as out-comes that follow (e.g., being less hungry and having less money). Scripts and event sequences can be organized by scenes, subgoals, or causal links (for a review, see Wyer & Gordon, 1984 ). First, scenes specify shorter temporal clusters; for example, a script for food shopping may include smaller scenes, such as standing in the checkout line. Second, scripts can be organized by their goals and subgoals. A person's goal to buy food includes ... log in or subscribe to read full text