Cognitive Schemeta

Never had any problem googling anything before ...... until now.

The term "cognitive schemata" came out several times in the tutorial yet its so hard to find a site which tells you what it is. This is unlike googling terms like "market failure", "de Moivre's theorem" and stuffs like that.

The term cognition is used in different ways by different disciplines. In psychology, it refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. A schema (pl. schemata), in psychology and cognitive science, is a mental structure that represents some aspect of the world. This learning theory views organized knowledge as an elaborate network of abstract mental structures which represent one's understanding of the world.

In other words, the behind the scenes of how we think and view things.

Share an experience when someone may have misunderstood something that you said. What may have caused the miscommunication? How might similar misunderstandings be prevented?

When i first read the question, I tried to recall the first thing that comes to mind. And here's how i might answer:

There was once when i told a friend of mine that he reminds me of a girl. He got pretty upset and refused to hear my explanation. Or maybe he's just being childish.

It is very clear to me what may have caused the miscommunication. In fact, I know that any guy will definitely get me wrong if i compared him to a girl. I simply wanted to do an exercise to show the meanings he attached to words. Girl to him might have the following words attached to it: weak, emotional, insecure, likes to cry ....... (ive gotta work on my vocab but u get wat i mean). Guys are generally strong, macho, stable, intelligent, brave and the list just goes on. In other words, he proved my theory right.

Should he look at it a lil more deeply, he would see that a girl is more often than not someone sweet. A girl is usually the nicest people around. And the list goes on. In other words, him reminding me of a girl is a complement rather than an insult. And like i said, i deliberately wanted to cause the misunderstanding but to prevent such misunderstandings from happening, one's got to first NOT assume that the other understands ur cryptic language....ur couple of lines between the lines.

Then, one should tell him all the beautiful words that are associated with the word girl and then tell him that like how wonderful a friend that girl is, he's just as wonderful. Which was why he reminded me of a girl i know. And e fact that i dun really noe any other girls makes him all the more wonderful and special. Explain to him step by step and hopefully, he'll see beyond the literal meaning of the word girl.

Effective communication seems fun!!

On a side note, im so not photogenic. I so hate to take pictures. And i'll be missing someone pretty soon.