Script Theory

Script theory is a model of human knowledge and cognition that has been successful in explaining memory organization and human behavior, and that has subsequently found many practical applications in the field of education. Scripts represent intelligence as a series of cognitive states (scenes) that hold critical information and explain the processes of the mind as a series of computations on the information stored. Humans learn scripts through repetitive social interaction and use them to predict, interpret, and understand new experiences. Educational implications of script theory include teaching in context, teaching through examples or through storytelling, and learning through doing and through repetition.

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Educational Theory > Script Theory

Overview

Script theory is a model of human knowledge and cognition that has been successful in explaining memory organization and human behavior, and that has subsequently found many practical applications in the field of education. According to script theory, knowledge is represented in memory as a series of actions centered on a particular goal; this sequence is called a script. Humans learn scripts through repetitive social interaction and use them to interpret new experiences (Nelson, 1986). For example, one might have a script for going out to eat. First, one enters the restaurant, and either approaches the counter or waits to be seated, depending on the type of restaurant one is visiting. One then orders food, eats, pays the bill, and leaves (Abelson, 1981). A script is subdivided into smaller units called scenes. The restaurant script consists of a sequence of scenes. For example, eating the meal is a scene that can be broken down into several actions: picking up utensils, using them to grab food, chewing, using a napkin, and so on.

Researchers have identified three types of scripts: event, physical, and role scripts. Event scripts dictate how humans act in particular situations, physical scripts dictate expectations in particular places, and role scripts guide actions as particular roles are taken on. Scripts are internalized from a particular point of view: the restaurant script is different, for example, for the customer, for the manager, and for the wait-staff (Dalli, 1991).

Scripts can further be categorized as "weak" or "strong." A strong script is one that dictates the exact sequence of scenes or actions to be performed, while a weak script may allow for variations in sequence. For example, the restaurant script is "strong" because one typically follows the same sequence of events when going out to eat, while a child's birthday party script is "weak," as one can play games, eat cake, or face paint in any order (Abelson, 1981).

Event, Role & Physical Scripts

In addition to these event scripts, research has defined "role scripts" (Halpern, 1997) and "physical scripts" (Funnell, 2001). A role script is one that guides one's actions while taking on a certain role--for example that of a mother, teacher, or friend. Each of these roles requires certain actions, has a goal, and comes with specific expectations. A physical script is a "snapshot" of a particular place--for example a classroom--that also implies a goal (learning), actions (reading, writing, solving problems), and expectations (a teacher will be present, required materials will be provided, and so on).

Educators and developmental psychologists and researchers have found script theory appealing in describing behavior patterns and cognitive understanding (Dalli, 1991). One reason is that scripts can explain not only behavior, but cognition. Scripts are stored in memory (cognition) and retrieved and used in practical situations (behavior). They were thus welcomed as an alternative to the prevalent behaviorist explanations of E. L. Thorndike, J. B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner that only took into account observable actions and that failed to account for cognitive processes.

Formation of Scripts

Roger Schank, one of the proponents of script theory, wrote that the human mind stores a collection of stories (1990); these stories are how one comes to understand the world. Scripts are internalized through socialization--children, for example, learn how to behave in certain situations through imitating or by following the guidance of those more experienced. Scripts are thus informed by the particular society in which they are formed, and are defined by societal norms. As scripts are externalized through behavior, they allow an individual to "fulfill society's normative requirements" (Halpern, 1997, p. 863). Scripts are thus an "efficient socializing mechanism" that provide a "shared knowledge base" (Dalli, 1991, p. 6). Once a script has been internalized, it influences one's intentions, expectations, interpretations, and behaviors (Anderson, 1983). Increasing the number of scripts a student knows, then, will enable that student to feel comfortable in an increasing number of situations.

Increasing the number of scripts a student knows, however, also has its drawbacks. Scripts automate behaviors, thus making them more efficient. When one has already internalized a script, one ceases to consciously think about specific details of the task at hand, leaving more energy for detecting novelties. The danger is that with the automatic externalization of scripts comes an increased potential for loss of wonder and curiosity (Schank, 1990).

Script theory has been criticized by theorists, including its very proponents, for confining behaviors and cognition to a rigid schema (Schank, 1982a). Thus script theorists do not propose that all information stored in memory is structured in the form of a script. Rather, they postulate that episodic memory for events regularly encountered is conceptualized in a schematic form, and that this structure is dynamic, flexible, and is constantly updated by new experiences (Schank, 1982a).

History

A script, sometimes called a schema, is by its very definition a structure used to understand and organize thoughts and behaviors. Late in the nineteenth century, with the increasing promises of developing scientific theories, scholars in various fields became interested in the systematic description of underlying structures of knowledge. This movement, termed structuralism, is an interdisciplinary field, comprised of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and computer science, among others.

One of the first structuralists was Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), whose work was pivotal in the development of a schematic understanding of human knowledge and cognition. Saussure systematically analyzed language as a formal system of properties and relationships, using scientific formulations in the study of linguistics (de Saussure, 2006). The study of language as the distinguishing characteristic of the human species informed the way memory and cognition were understood across a broad range of fields.

Foundations in Piaget & Bartlett

The concept of schematic organization of memory and understanding first appeared in the work of developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) and in Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett's (1886-1969) work in experimental psychology (Bartlett, 1932). Piaget noted that children assimilate experiences, incorporating them into abstract schemata that they are then able to apply in various situations. For example, a young infant learns to grasp and suckle during breastfeeding, and then attempts to apply this schema to other aspects of his experience--thus is explained infants' tendency to place anything they are able to grasp in their mouths. Bartlett attempted to understand memory through his experimental work with storytelling. He observed that after being told stories, subjects could not remember specific details, but were accurate in remembering the general structure of stories, especially when stories followed typical patterns encountered in life experiences or in folklore. Bartlett hypothesized that memory holds a number of schemata, or structures of understanding, formed through repeated experiences (Bartlett, 1932).

Piaget's and Bartlett's work provided the foundation upon which computer scientists, decades later, built the formal foundations of script theory. Script theory was formulated by Roger Schank (1946-) and Robert Abelson (1928-2005), two researchers in the field of artificial intelligence, but was part of the larger movement of cognitive science that was born between the 1950s and 1970s and that has continued to grow in the twenty-first century. Cognitive science is the study of the mind and intelligence. It arose in direct opposition to behaviorist psychology popular in the 1950s that explained the complexity of human action through describing behavior alone, without accounting for mental processes. Cognitive science is approached through a wide range of conceptual lenses and methodologies, but is in its theoretical essence a theory of representation and computation (Martin Bly et al, 1999). It aims to represent intelligence as a series of cognitive states that hold critical information, and to explain the processes of the mind as a series of computations on the information stored.

Influence of Artificial Intelligence

The technological possibilities of creating thinking machines, which arose in the 1950s within the new field of artificial intelligence (AI), was pivotal in transforming the theoretical field of representational theory of mind into the empirical, practical applications of cognitive science. Though psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, and others had studied cognition as it manifests in human action, artificial intelligence for the first time was able to test whether the "rules" described by these empiricists truly did create intelligent agents. Natural language processing was used by researchers in AI to test these rules of representation, not only because machines at the time were not able to perform physical acts, but also because language processing is considered to be the uniquely human ability that represents intelligence (Haugeland, 1989).

Further Insights

The Theory of Scripts

Schank and Abelson formulated script theory as an alternative to purely structural explanations of language processing (Schank & Abelson, 1977). Their approach closely parallels Marvin Minsky's frame theory of AI, which models memory as a series of data structures called frames (Miikkulainen, 1990).

Schank and Abelson noted that structural representations did not account for meaning in sentences, and thus were of limited use when applied to the programming of artificial agents. For example, if the sentence structure noun-verb-article-noun is taken as valid, sentences such as "John ate an orange" are valid as well as sentences such as "John ate a chair." Further, they noted that two sentences with varied structures could be essentially represented by the same concept. For example, "I took a bath after arriving home" has the same meaning as "Arriving home, I decided to take a bath, and did so." Programming computers to understand meaning based on sentence structure alone proved to be of limited use.

Schank and Abelson further noted that even though people remember the general ideas and structures of stories, they tend not to use the same words in their retelling as those used in the initial telling. They postulated that the mind represents language as abstract concepts that are then stored in memory independent of language. For example, the sentence "John gave a book to Mary" might be retold as "Mary took a book from John" (Schank, 1982). The abstracted concept used here is that of transference: essentially, an object was transferred from John to Mary. In the retelling of the original idea, the concept is remembered, not the particular words used. These observations, along with the observation that certain patterns arise repeatedly in experience, led Schank and Abelson to conclude that the mind represents knowledge as a series of abstract, loosely organized concepts (in the case of weak scripts) or sequentially organized concepts (in the case of strong scripts).

Script Hierarchy

Actions in strong scripts are connected temporally and causally (Pierce & Michelle-Crain, 1996). One action leads to another (causality), while actions are related through their place in a sequence of events (temporality). Scripts are also hierarchically organized, an observation borrowed from Noam Chomsky's post-structuralist linguistics (Mesoudi & Whiten, 2004). For example, the hierarchy of a restaurant script may be represented as below in Figure 1. Actions or concepts at the top are more "general," occurring most often, while those at the bottom of the hierarchy represent details that might be different from one situation (script instantiation) to another. Thus actions or concepts at the top of the hierarchy are better remembered than those at the bottom (Mesoudi & Whiten, 2004).

Scripts are formed through "overlearning:" through repetition, sequences are automated and internalized (Sawyer, 2001). Over-learning improves the internalization of a particular script, but diminishes recall of particular script instances (Fasig, 1999). For example, once one has become accustomed to going out to eat, one may forget what one had on a particular occasion, while if one only goes to a restaurant on an infrequent basis, one is more likely to remember what one ate at a specific time.

Once scripts are fully assimilated, learning occurs when one is confronted with the unexpected, with anomalies or contradictions. Encountering the unexpected forces one to be mindful of the situation at hand, to ask questions, and to solve problems that arise (Whitten, 2003). Understanding means connecting present experiences with knowledge already stored in memory; thus understanding is challenged when unexpected situations arise (Schank, 1990).

How are scripts accessed? Schank proposed that the process of reminding is key to the retrieval of memories. Understanding is the process of reminding oneself of the right stories at the appropriate time (Schank, 1990). Stories are found--one is reminded of them--through indexing. An index is a theme around which experiences are organized. For example, the index of "food" might contain various dishes one has had over the course of experience. When one enters a restaurant, one might index the "food" category of one's memory to form expectations about possible menu options. Indices are highly dependent on the personal preferences and personality of a particular individual. What one organizes experiences around (indices) are meanings and concepts that define one's worldview (Schank, 1990).

Script Theory Revisited: A Dynamic Memory Model

After the initial proposition of script theory by Schank and Abelson (1977), Schank further developed the theory to account for the dynamic restructuring of scripts that occurs with the learning and assimilating of new experiences. Criticism of the initial theory, offered by Schank himself among others, was that a script, though accounting for meaning, is a highly structuralist formulation that is rigid and inflexible. Schank thus revisited scripts and proposed a model that allows for dynamic change in memory structures (1982a). He expounded on the learning and organization of scripts, and used memory organization packets (MOPs) and thematic organization packets (TOPs) to account for dynamic change. MOPs organize experiences around particular purposes; for example, "obtaining food" might be a MOP around which remembrances of restaurant visits, cooking, being cooked for, and so on are organized. TOPs organize experiences around particular themes, and are thus more general than MOPs. For example, a TOP might be "responsibility," and might include role scripts such as being a teacher, or event scripts such as voting or serving jury duty. MOPs and TOPs dynamically change and grow through increased experience. Indices in scripts refer to MOPs and TOPs, and as these dynamically adjust, scripts increase in flexibility.

Applications

Teaching through Doing & through Repetition

Scripts are internalized through repetitive personal experience, and as scripts can be used to model the organization of knowledge, learning in the classroom according to this framework occurs through repeated encounters with the material to be learned. Teaching should not be done through telling; personal experience with the material is paramount to its internalization, so students should be encouraged to explore problems on their own (Schank, 1982b). For example, before a zoology lesson, a field trip to a natural science museum might be a way to foster interest in the subject and to cultivate personal experience with the material. Field trips are considered by Schank to be an excellent way of introducing new subjects to children (1982b).

Imagining specific actions has also been found to correlate to learning of that particular action (Anderson, 1983). Imagining behavioral scripts changes "behavioral intentions," which in turn change target behaviors (Anderson, 1983, p. 302). When it is impractical for students to engage in a particular activity individually, having students "imagine" the experience, through creative writing exercises or other means, is an attractive, feasible alternative.

Teaching in Context

Scripts as holistic explanations of behavior and cognition offer contextual information about particular episodes. Context is critical to understanding, and thus to learning. There is evidence that young children, for example, may be able to recognize an object in its natural setting--within a pre-formed physical script--but not outside of it (Funnell, 2001). Learning to make inferences, to identify causal connections, to make plans, to track goals, and to recognize familiar situations are all components of the critical understanding cultivated in the classroom (Schank, 1982b). These ideas are best taught in context; for example, it is difficult to establish causal connections when the whole story is not given, or to track goals when steps are not elaborated and when plans are not made with attention to the larger scheme. Context should also be realistic in order for it to be useful to students (Schank, 2005), and should build on students' previous experiences (Schank, 1982b). Children understand through reminding themselves of knowledge they already possess, so presenting a situation in which all material is new will result in little assimilation. Lessons should include concepts students already know, and should build upon these in a logical, easy-to-follow manner. Students might be presented with various options, for example, and consequences of each explained or experienced (Schank, 2005). This further enforces the connection between plans, goals, and actions that is a critical component of understanding through scripts.

Teaching through Stories

One way to ensure material is presented in context is to teach it through storytelling (Schank, 1990). History as a list of important events and people, as it is commonly taught, is difficult for students to internalize, for example. An alternative is to read stories to students about the lives of particular individuals of the times. Students can then make connections between their own experiences of daily happenings with those of the characters, and can recognize patterns of behavior, motivations, and situations similar to ones they have encountered.

Schank (1990) wrote that memory is a collection of stories. Stories shape understanding and allow students to connect to characters, fostering an understanding of others' motivations and empathy for others' situations. Knowing the stories of one's culture further helps students learn decision-making through presenting alternatives that have been tried and their consequences. Culturally common stories also connect individuals through providing a common foundation and through making them feel as "part of a common group" (Schank, 1990, p. 194). Storytelling establishes societal "bonds," thus stories in classrooms are an excellent way of fostering positive group dynamics.

Teaching Reading

Script theory suggests that methods for teaching reading are more complex than those suggested by proponents of phonics or "sight" (Schank, 1982b). Initially, students should be taught word recognition of a large repository of "basic" words; once they become familiar with word patterns and their associated sounds, students are then able to phonetically sound out more complicated words. Initial word recognition is best taught through letting children predict logical fillers in sentences read out loud by the teacher. For example, a teacher might read the sentence "Mary was hungry, so she bought some ice [cream]," leaving out the word "cream" and letting the student "read" this word by him or herself. This method also teaches prediction, an important part of comprehension and understanding (Schank, 1982b).

Teachers might also teach reading through first repeating a story many times, until students are able to repeat it almost simply through memory. Then, students can be encouraged to "read" it by themselves. Technically they are not reading at this point, but learning to recognize words as they vocally repeat stories they have memorized. Through this method, students also gain confidence in their reading skills, a critical component needed to build comprehension skills (Schank, 1982b). Once students are able to sight read a variety of words, they can be taught to phonetically decode complex words made of parts they can already recognize. It is important to make reading material interesting and relevant to the students, as many get turned off by reading material that is too simplistic or unrelated to anything they have experienced (Schank, 1982b).

Teaching Science & Mathematics

Science and mathematics are less contextual than other subjects, so they are harder to adapt to teaching methods suggested by script theory. Scientific material is also not encountered repeatedly in daily settings, so scripts for solving scientific problems are not initially natural for students (Whitten, 2003). Science can be made more contextual, however, through presenting it in a historical fashion rather than in a thematic fashion. For example, instead of learning biology, physics, and chemistry as separate subjects, students might learn about the lives of ancient Egyptians and their formulations of geometry and physics as they solved problems of agriculture, their encounters with various wildlife and crops, and their alchemical practices.

Mathematics might draw additional lessons from script theory's emphasis on repetition and formulation of sequential steps to solve commonly encountered problems. Script theory suggests students should be taught clear steps for solving a specific type of problem, and should internalize this process through repeating many problems of the same sort. After the basic script has been learned, unexpected variations can be introduced, which might cause initial confusion but ultimately lead to the asking of questions and result in learning (Whitten, 2003).

Viewpoints

Similar to script theory is the idea that memory is stored in the form of images, not abstract concepts (Anderson, 1983). Theoretically, the implications of this theory are the same as those of script theory, the only difference being how ideas are stored. Some argue images are a more practical explanation for how information is stored in memory, for if it is not in the form of language, but of "abstract concepts," what form do these abstract concepts take?

In artificial intelligence, natural language processing is no longer primarily achieved through implementations of scripts. Increased computing capacity has allowed AI to model human brains (and hence, cognitive functions such as language) through other implementation such as hierarchical feature maps (Miikkulainen, 1990) or neural networks. Feature maps are abstract representational structures that store information and that are interconnected in complex ways, while artificial neural networks directly model electrical activity of biological bundles of neural (brain) cells.

Theoretically, script theory has been criticized by post-structuralists as too rigid in its framework, despite Schank's modifications accounting for dynamic change. Essentially, though script theory does account for meaning, and not just for structure, it does so in a "structuralist" way--through explaining memory as a representation of information that is systematically organized and that follows certain rules. Post-structuralists emphasize the importance of improvisation within a structured framework (Sawyer, 2001) as well as the importance of recognizing each experience is at least partially constructed as one lives it (Dalli, 1991).

Terms & Concepts

Cognitive Science: The interdisciplinary field that studies mental processes. Cognitive science is theoretically representational and computational. It represents experiences and memories as abstract conceptual states, and explains human understanding as a computational process of information stored in memory.

Index: A "pointer" in a script that functions to remind of previous experiences. Indices in Schank's revised dynamic model of scripts may point to MOPs or TOPs, structures in memory organized around particular events or themes.

Memory Organization Packets (MOP): Representational structures in memory that organize experiences around particular goals or purposes; for example, "obtaining food" might be a MOP around which remembrances of restaurant visits, cooking, being cooked for, and so on are organized.

Physical Scripts: Scripts that provide a stereotypical "snapshot" of a kind of place. One may have physical scripts, for example, for a classroom, a museum, or a home. Each physical script comes with associated expectations, goals, and actions typically performed there.

Post-Structuralism: The interdisciplinary field that arose as a response to structuralism, and that criticized structuralism's reliance on functionality in explaining relationships. Post-structuralism emphasizes the importance of improvisation within structural frameworks, as well as the construction of lived experience.

Reminding: The mental process through which understanding occurs; in script theory, once a script is instantiated in a particular situation, the individual indexes (reminds him or herself of) particular events or themes encountered in the past. This reminding helps him or her make sense (understand) the present experience.

Role Scripts: A script that is associated with particular roles one may take on in society, such as those of mother, teacher, or friend. Each role comes with associated goals, expectations, and actions.

Scenes: A sequence of actions centered on a particular goal, but not having as broad a context as a script; scripts are composed of a series of scenes.

Schemata: A word sometimes used instead of "script" to denote a systematic formulation of a structure used to understand and organize experience or memory.

Strong Scripts: A script in which the sequence of events or actions is of critical importance; events in strong scripts are temporally and causally connected. One event generally follows another in exact sequence (temporal), while certain events cause others to occur (causality).

Structuralism: A multidisciplinary field developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that attempts to describe concepts as critically connected through a scaffold of systematically defined relationships, or structures.

Thematic Organization Packets (TOP): Representational structures in memory that organize experiences around particular themes; for example, a TOP might be "responsibility," and might include role scripts such as being a teacher, or event scripts such as voting or serving jury duty.

Weak Scripts: A script in which the sequence of scenes or actions is loosely defined and not of particular importance; for example, a child's birthday script may involve a number of scenes, such as eating cake, playing games, or watching a performance, but these scenes may appear in any order.

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