The things to remember about schema theory is that schemata are:
1. evolved for remembering, not for storing information (this is not to say that storage is unimportant, just that storage doesn't have to be efficient if search and retrieval is);
2. frameworks that organize experiences into their general structural similarities, not carbon copies of experiences.
3. incomplete, needing local, immediate information to instantiate them, as well as some facts and rules retrieved from associative memory;
4. Hierarchical in that some schemata subsume others. A few good schema, when recombined can provide a kind of combinatoric power to aid memory and behavior;
5. Not the only way to think about memory. Schemata are models, not memory itself.
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Statement 1 seems to imply that humans use schema to remember things, yet statement 5 says that they are not the only way to think about memory. Do humans use schemata to remember things, or does schema theory only describe the unknown process they are using?
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