Clearly, schematic knowledge helps you ― guiding your
understanding and enabling you to reconstruct things you
cannot remember.
(A)
Likewise, if there are things you can’t recall, your
schemata will fill in the gaps with knowledge about
what’s typical in that situation. As a result, a reliance on
schemata will inevitably make the world seem more
“normal” than it really is and will make the past seem
more “regular” than it actually was.
(B)
Any reliance on schematic knowledge, therefore, will be
shaped by this information about what’s “normal.” Thus,
if there are things you don’t notice while viewing a
situation or event, your schemata will lead you to fill in
these “gaps” with knowledge about what’s normally in
place in that setting.
(C)
But schematic knowledge can also hurt you, promoting
errors in perception and memory. Moreover, the types of
errors produced by schemata are quite predictable: Bear in
mind that schemata summarize the broad pattern of your
experience, and so they tell you, in essence, what’s typical
or ordinary in a given situation.