Schema: Concepts that Fire Together, Wire Together
The Miracle of Walking While Chewing Bubblegum
Have you ever thought about how complex a lot of your daily activities actually are? Take driving, for example. You are working two or three pedals, a wheel, and a number of different dials, levers, and switches at the same time, while watching traffic in front, behind, and beside you using a series of mirrors (in which objects are closer than they appear). You have to account for pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, bicyclists, potholes, and debris while navigating a maze of signs, signals, road indicators, and specialized traffic formations. You have to monitor constant changes in the speed you are allowed to travel and make adjustments accordingly, keep the car centered in a narrow lane, and maneuver in coordination with thousands of other people performing the same complex task at more or less lethal speeds where decisions and reactions have to take place in fractions of a second.
You do all of this while thinking about what is for dinner, what errands you need to run before heading home, what happened at work that day, and what route you need to follow to get to your destination, plus a number of alternative routes in case traffic is bad on the one you’re using.
You’re also probably listening to music, news, or a podcast while all of this is happening. Yet despite it all, your mind will still sometimes drift off in boredom to the extent that you may forget to run your errands and drive home completely on autopilot, remembering nothing about the trip until you pull into the garage and get yelled at for not picking up any milk.
So… How?
Considering your working memory is an extremely finite mental resource, one that can only handle three or four active mental processes at once, it would be reasonable to wonder how you are even able to walk down a busy street, let alone operate a complex mechanical device like a car, without overloading and stuttering to a stop.
So how do we manage such a feat?
The short answer is, practice. But knowing the answer and understanding how it came to be the answer are two very different things. As instructional designers, it’s important that we not stop at the “what” but also explore the “how” and the “why” so that we can tease out the important psychological base elements that allow us to make effective instructional interventions for our clients.
Hebbian Schema
In neurological circles there is a theory called “Hebb’s Theory” or “Hebb’s Law”, which postulates that neurons that frequently engage one another will eventually shift closer together in the brain. The phrase “neurons that fire together, wire together” is often used in reference to that theory, and over time, the development of more sophisticated neural imaging technology has proven Hebb to be largely correct.
On the psychology and cognitive science side of the fence, this process is reflected in the concept of the formation of schema (via Bartlett and Anderson), which are complex mental structures that function in the working memory as if they were simple individual tasks, taking up only one of the available four slots in working memory. These form when a group of simple tasks are performed together so frequently that the individual tasks comprising it no longer seem separate from the task itself.
The brain’s ability to form advanced schema is key to our ability to move about and adapt to the complexities of the world we live in, but there is a danger inherent in the process as well. Just as a bad habit is hard to shake once it is ingrained in our psyche, so too a badly formed or outdated schema takes an inordinate amount of work to unwind and reform properly.
Take Care What You Train In
Repetition is the key to forming schema, especially when the repetitions are spaced, novel, and relevant to the needs of the learner, but there are also some pitfalls to consider when designing them. First off, the most obvious thing to avoid is training in a bad habit. Going back to the driving analogy, something like changing lanes without getting into the habit of signaling beforehand could lead to tragic consequences down the road, and once you’ve gotten used to changing lanes without it, forcing yourself to start doing it after the schema is formed will require a great deal more mental effort to remedy.
It’s also important that the training does not rely entirely on dead-end short cuts that prevent future growth. Substituting rote memorization for core knowledge is one manifestation of this mistake. For example, knowing the trick for multiples of nine in mathematics, first number +1, second number -1 (1 and 8, 2 and 7, 3 and 6 etc.) can be useful for quick calculations, but if the learner never learns how multiples are calculated as a result of using tricks as a substitute, their ability to extrapolate this knowledge into more advanced mathematics later on will be stunted.
Finally, it is also important that schema are not formed with too much rigidity. Training that something is “always this way” can lead to a learner being unable to adapt to novel situations or changes in circumstance that require them to adjust their schema in the future. Just from a technological standpoint, our world is constantly experiencing paradigm shifts that require us to partially or completely update and re-frame our understanding of the world and and how it works. Any training meant to help develop new schema should be mindful to highlight how that schema might be updated in the future.
Have a look through some of our work examples in the Custom Modules section of the site to see some of our most popular methods of delivering training meant to streamline the formation of new schema for learners, or speak to a senior ISD to discuss options for training that aids in effective schema formation and is also designed to be quickly and easily updated in the future, when one of those unexpected paradigm shifts hits in your industry.
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About the author
Chavis N. Comer
Founder and Senior Instructional Systems Designer of Tohmes Training, Mr. Comer has nearly two decades of experience developing training programs for clients representing a variety of industries across dozens of different countries. From the federal government to the banking and tech sectors to local K-12 school systems and universities, he has provided consultation and design services to a truly diverse portfolio of clientele.