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Magnitude of Discrepancy and the Distribution of Attention in Infants
... It should be noted that this pattern can also be explained if infants respond to only one physical change but not to more than one physical change, as would be predicted by the optimal discrepancy hypothesis (McCall et al., 1977). Although some investigators have found that young infants (i.e., 4 months and younger) tend to dishabituate not to the most discrepant novel stimulus but to one that is intermediate in discrepancy (McCall et al., 1977), others have reported a linear relation between the level of discrepancy and infant dishabituation, with infants dishabituating more to novel stimuli that are more discrepant (e.g., Cohen, Gelber, & Lazar, 1971;DeLoache, 1976;Welch, 1974). ...
... It should be noted that this pattern can also be explained if infants respond to only one physical change but not to more than one physical change, as would be predicted by the optimal discrepancy hypothesis (McCall et al., 1977). Although some investigators have found that young infants (i.e., 4 months and younger) tend to dishabituate not to the most discrepant novel stimulus but to one that is intermediate in discrepancy (McCall et al., 1977), others have reported a linear relation between the level of discrepancy and infant dishabituation, with infants dishabituating more to novel stimuli that are more discrepant (e.g., Cohen, Gelber, & Lazar, 1971;DeLoache, 1976;Welch, 1974). The particular stimuli involved and the dimensions manipulated appear to be critical in determining whether infants' interest in the novel stimuli is a linear function related to discrepancy from the familiar, or is curvilinearly related, with infants This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
Two experiments investigated the role of continuity cues in infants' perception of launching events as causal. Experiment 1 showed that 7-month-old infants can use spatial and temporal contiguity to perceive causality: Infants who were habituated to a causal event dishabituated to novel noncausal events, in which either spatial or temporal contiguity was violated, and those who were habituated to a noncausal event dishabituated to a novel causal but not a novel noncausal event. Experiment 2 showed that 10-month-olds, but not 7-month-olds, perceived the causality of launching events in which the objects moved along dissimilar paths. Thus, younger infants do not appear to attend to causality when the objects move along different paths. Results are discussed in terms of the development of the use of continuity cues in causal judgments.
... Established findings from psychology show that young infants prefer novel stimuli (see, example, McCall et al. 1977;Ranganath and Rainer 2003). However, the want for novelty is a behavioral tendency manifested not only by human infants, but also by human adults and animals (see, example, Najm-Briscoe et al. 2000). ...
... An inverted U-shaped relation between the degree of novelty (as the independent variable) and some measure of an agent's well-being (as the dependent variable) can be assumed. There are-in a psycho-physiological context-areas of excitation and positive excitability and inhibition and negative excitability by novel stimuli (see McCall et al. 1977;Anderson 1990). 3 Moreover, novelty contributes in determining an organism's level of neurophysiological activation or arousal (Steriade 1996) and thus influences the affective evaluation of situations. 4 Fiske and Maddi (1961) have argued that, to a considerable extent, affect is a function of the discrepancy between actual and characteristic levels of activation or arousal, i.e., large discrepancies are ordinarily associated with negative affect (unpleasant), while positive affect (pleasant) is experienced when such discrepancies are reduced (see also Ursin and Eriksen 2004). ...
The paper analyzes the ambiguous interplay of some human cognitive dispositions and competitive forces: (a) people have a
want for a certain amount of novelty—potentially induced by competition-driven innovation—but emotionally resist an excessive
degree of novel mental experiences; and (b) competition-driven change introduces challenges to agents that may result in fluid
life states when skills and cognitive resources enable an individual to meet these challenges or in strained life states if
this is not the case. As a result, some affective constraints to economic development and potential implications for economic
theory development and policy making are identified.
... The existence of a comparator process which deals with transformations was proposed by workers investigating the 'discrepancy hypothesis'. A number of classic studies have shown that infants' attention to stimuli shows an inverted-U relationship with a degree of discrepancy from a preceding stimulus (McCall and Melson, 1969;Super et al., 1972;Zelazo et al., 1973;Hopkins et al., 1976;McCall et al., 1977;Kagan et al., 1979). Degree of stimulus discrepancy has been indexed by degree of transformation brought about through spatial transposition of stimulus elements, or through substitution of elements. ...
The present study was motivated by a concern with the cognitive processes that infants bring to bear on stimulation offered by adults. As previous studies have highlighted the importance of parental stimulation with objects, this study consisted of an experimental investigation of this context of stimulation. It was hypothesized that adults' actions that demonstrate the functions of toys activate a comparator process in 9-month-old infants. It was predicted that prior exposure to the toy in a stationary state would increase attention to a demonstrative action, as the comparator process requires time over and above the local processing of an event. This prediction was borne out: 9-month-olds infants' attention to the demonstration of the functions of a toy was augmented by immediate prior exposure to the toy in a stationary state. By contrast, attention to other actions which did not demonstrate specific functions was either significantly reduced by prior exposure to the toy, or unaffected. Moreover, 16-month-olds who are better able to perform a broad range of actions with objects, did not show increased attention to a demonstration of functions when prior exposure to the toy was provided. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... We suggest that the curvilinear discrepancy hypothesis might help to explain aspects of these data (Kagan, 1971;McCall, Kennedy, & Appelbaum, 1977). The discrepancy principle states that the duration of attention to a new event, compared with a familiar one, is often a function of the degree of discrepancy between the unfamiliar stimulus and the schema for the familiar, rather than the ease of detectability between old and new. ...
The habituation paradigm is frequently used to assess cognitive development in infants. Habituation to a stimulus by repeated presentation, followed by dishabituation (increased attention to a novel stimulus) is taken to imply discriminability of the novel stimulus. However, infants do not always dishabituate, even when the old and new stimuli are known to be discriminable. It is postulated that failure of dishabituation could be due either to a lack of discriminability of the new stimulus or to failure to relate it to the schema elaborated during habituation. Support for this postulate was obtained in 4 experiments with a total of 200 infants ranging in age from 5.5 to 29 mo. The materials varied from geometric forms through auditory stimuli to conceptual categories. In some cases dishabituation did not occur despite the known discriminability of familiar and novel stimuli. The degree of attention directed toward the new stimulus might better be understood in terms of the degree of discrepancy between the unfamiliar stimulus and the schema for the familiar (the curvilinear discrepancy hypothesis) rather than the ease of discriminability between old and new stimuli. (French abstract) (30 ref)
Phenomena such as engagement, attention and curiosity rely heavily on the “optimal-level of stimulation (or arousal)” model, which suggests they are driven by stimuli being neither too simple nor too complex. Two points often overlooked in psychology are that each stimulus is simultaneously processed with its context, and that a stimulus complexity is relative to an individual’s cognitive resources to process it. According to the “optimal-level of stimulation” model, while familiar contexts may decrease the overall stimulation and favour exploration of novelty, a novel context may increase the overall stimulation and favour preference for familiarity. In order to stay closer to their optimum when stimulation is getting too high or too low, individuals can explore other stimuli, adopt a different processing style or be creative. The need and the ability to adopt such strategies will depend upon the cognitive resources available, which can be affected by contextual stimulation and by other factors such as age, mood or arousability. Drawing on empirical research in cognitive and developmental psychology, we provide here an updated “optimal-level of stimulation” model, which is holistic and coherent with previous literature. Once taken into account the role of contextual stimulation as well as the diverse factors influencing internal cognitive resources, such model fits with and enriches other existing theories related to exploratory behaviors. By doing so, it provides a useful framework to investigate proximate explanations underlying learning and cognitive development, and to develop future interventions related, for example, to eating, and learning disorders.
A conceptual framework for understanding various aspects of infants' responses to moderately challenging visual events within a broader context of emotion-cognition interaction is proposed. Based on experimental data the major points that are made are: (1) Even a simple visual event represents a task for the young infant, requiring active perceptual processing in order to organize the sensory input. (2) Effortful processing is accompanied by an experience of tension which is released when the event has successfully been organized. (3) Succesful organization depends on event characteristics and the subject's perceptual- cognitive capacities as well as on his momentary state of arousal.
In its most general form, the discrepancy hypothesis states that an organism attends and affectively responds to new stimuli as an inverted-U function of the stimuli’s physical or conceptual discrepancy (i.e., dissimilarity) from a well-familiarized standard stimulus. That is, moderate discrepancies from highly familiar stimuli receive both the highest degree of attention and positive affect, whereas stimuli that are quite familiar or extremely different from what the organism knows well receive relatively less attention and less positive—perhaps even negative—affective responses and evaluations. The hypothesis is presented graphically in Figure 1.
A set of four facial stimuli derived from the Bolton standards of craniofacial development representing a human male at 6 months, 3, 8, and 18 years of age were used in a test of Lorenz's concept of babyishness and of the discrepancy hypothesis. Each 4-month-old subject was habituated to a criterion with one of the four stimuli and then presented with one of the four as a new stimulus. The design and analysis permitted the response to a new stimulus to be broken down into a component attributable to the physical characteristics of the new stimulus and a part attributable to its discrepancy from the familiar standard. The data revealed longer looking at the infant facial stimulus, but no difference in a rating of affect accompanying fixation. This lent partial support to the babyishness concept for infant subjects. Both fixation and affect increased monotonically with magnitude of discrepancy. The increasing rather than curvilinear result presumably derived from the failure of these stimuli (which were common to the infant's experience) to generate extreme levels of subjective uncertainty.
There is a paucity of studies of infants’ and toddlers’ preferences of television content. This home observation study investigated how young children’s attention to television is determined by auditory, visual, and content features of the program and by program difficulty. Fifty 6- to 58-month-olds were presented with a videotape consisting of segments of the news, Sesame Street, Teletubbies, and Lion King II. Results agreed with the moderate-discrepancy hypothesis, which states that young children pay most attention to television content that is only moderately discrepant from their existing knowledge and capabilities. Among infants, salient auditory and visual features (e.g., applause, visual surprises) particularly attracted their attention. These features also attracted older children’s attention, but older children predominantly allocated their attention to television content on the basis of nonsalient (e.g., moderate character action) and content features (e.g., letters/numbers, meaningful dialogue). The attentional shift from salient to nonsalient and content features started between 1.5 and 2.5 years of age.
Maße der visuellen Aufmerksamkeit im Säuglingsalter haben sich als gute Indikatoren frühkindlicher kognitiver Fähigkeiten erwiesen. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht das Zusammenspiel von Habituations-Dishabituations-Leistungen innerhalb und zwischen verschiedenartigen visuellen Habituationsaufgaben im ersten Lebensjahr. Nach dem Komparatormodell und dessen Weiterentwicklungen (basierend auf Sokolov, 1963) bildet das Habituationsverhalten im Säuglingsalter Prozesse der Reizenkodierung ab. Dieses kognitive Modell des Habituationsgeschehens ist für die Verarbeitung einzelner wiederholter Reize gut belegt, für die Darbietung multipler, kategorialer Reize jedoch bisher kaum geprüft worden. Wenn die im kognitiven Modell postulierten Prozesse grundlegende allgemeine Informationsverarbeitungsfähigkeiten darstellen, sollten diese Fähigkeiten der Verarbeitung in visuellen Einzelreizaufgaben wie in Kategorisierungsaufgaben zugrunde liegen und somit eine Konsistenz von Aufmerksamkeitsleistungen über Aufgabenkontexte hinweg zu beobachten sein. Zur Überprüfung dieser Annahme wurden aus der Komparatortheorie abgeleitete Vorhersagen für die Verarbeitung in Einzelreizaufgaben mit derjenigen in Kategorisierungsaufgaben verglichen; dabei wurden jeweils beide Aufgaben innerhalb derselben Stichprobe von Säuglingen vorgegeben (Innersubjektdesign). In fünf Experimenten wurden individuelle Unterschiede im Blickverhalten fünf und sieben Monate alter Säuglinge innerhalb und zwischen beiden Aufgabentypen analysiert, wobei verschiedene Blickmaße und unterschiedliche Habituationsprozeduren berücksichtigt wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen eine über verschiedene experimentelle Prozeduren und Blickmaße hinweg auftretende Gleichförmigkeit der Zusammenhänge von Habituations- und Dishabituationsleistungen in beiden Aufgabentypen. Während die Zusammenhänge zwar in Abhängigkeit von der Durchführungsprozedur und den verwendeten Blickmaßen variierten, zeigte sich hinsichtlich des Auftretens und der Richtung der Bezüge ein für Einzelreiz- und Kategorisierungsaufgaben einheitliches Muster der Zusammenhänge von Habituations- und Dishabituationsleistungen, innerhalb wie zwischen den Aufgaben. Dieses aufgabenübergreifende Befundmuster deutet darauf hin, dass die mit den vorliegenden Habituations- und Dishabituationsmaßen erfassten latenten Prozesse sowohl in der Verarbeitung von Einzelreizen als auch in der Kategorisierung von Reizklassen zum Tragen kommen. Eine Spezifizierung des kognitiven Modells im Hinblick auf das hier untersuchte Habituations- und Kategorisierungsverhalten wird vorgestellt. Implikationen für den Aufbau der Intelligenzstruktur im Säuglingsalter sowie für die praktisch-diagnostische Anwendung werden diskutiert. Measures of early visual attention have been proven to allow access to the cognitive abilities of young infants. The present study examines the interplay of habituation and dishabituation responses within and between different visual habituation tasks in the first year of life. According to comparator theory (based on Sokolov, 1963), habituation performance in infancy mirrors a process of stimulus encoding. While this cognitive model of habituation has received ample support from studies investigating visual recognition memory for a single stimulus, the validity of comparator theory is less clear with respect to categorization studies where infants are habituated to multiple exemplars of a stimulus category. If habituation in infancy indicates a general encoding ability, however, this ability should underlie the processing of single stimuli as well as of categorical stimuli. Thus, a consistency of habituation performance over different task contexts should exist. In order to test this assumption, several predictions derived from comparator theory were compared between two visual habituation tasks, one requiring the encoding of a single stimulus, the other the encoding of a stimulus category. Both tasks were presented to the same sample of infants (within-subject-design). In five experiments, individual differences in habituation-dishabituation responses of 5- and 7-months-old infants were analyzed within and between both tasks, taking into account different habituation procedures and visual attention measures. Results showed similar habituation-dishabituation-relations both within and between the two types of tasks. While the relations varied systematically depending on experimental procedure and attention measure, the pattern of results changed symmetrically for single-stimulus and categorization tasks. Thus, regarding the existence and direction of relations between habituation and dishabituation responses, a uniformity of relations over different task contexts could be observed. The uniform pattern of results for both tasks points to similar cognitive processes underlying the encoding and discrimination of single and of categorical stimuli. A specification of the comparator model with respect to the investigated habituation and categorization behaviour is presented. Implications for the structure of intelligence in infancy and for clinical use of the present paradigm are discussed.
Curiosity is a complex function that is related to a number of other psychological functions such as motivation, arousal, attention, and novelty preference. This paper presents the thesis that curiosity represents a separate ego function which is closely tied to objects and is centrally organizing in all phases of development. It is an integrative function that regulates arousal, motivation, and affect, begins in infancy, has a neurobiological base, and is channeled by the child's social experience. Psychologically, curiosity may serve both libidinal and aggressive aims. Psychoanalytic views of curiosity are considered in light of data from studies of infants' and young children's exploratory activities and a model is presented for the developmental function of curiosity throughout the life-span.
This chapter examines the evidence for regarding intelligence as, in part, deriving from one's response to novelty. It reviews research and theorizing in diverse domains, such as infant visual information processing, infant recognition memory, selected aspects of infant temperament (task persistence and attention span), psychometric intelligence, Piagetian intelligence, and cognitive psychology, in order to demonstrate the idea that one's response to novel tasks and situations is intimately involved in the construct of intelligence. An organizing framework for conceptualizing intelligence as, in part, a response to novelty is provided. This framework comprises two major aspects: a motivational aspect, according to which a person's interest in, curiosity about, and preference for novelty are involved in intelligent functioning; and an information-extraction aspect, which involves identification of those component processes that are involved in the acquisition of novel information. The chapter argues that viewing intelligence as involving a person's response to novelty, of a variety of kinds, may provide theorists a means for understanding at least one source of continuity in the nature of intelligence across the life span. In turn, this continuity may suggest a relatively stable source of individual differences in intellectual development.
This chapter defines two common classes of perceptual anisotropy. They are perceptual salience of the main orthogonals, meaning the orientation hierarchy of vertical-horizontal-oblique, and perceptual equivalence on the lateral meaning the similarity of left-right mirror-image sections or enantiomorphs of a pattern. The circumstances under which these perceptual anisotropies emerge in different species, particularly in humans have been reviewed. The chapter focuses on visual perception, since the visual modality is superior to others in the perception of space and interprets psychological evidence that points to the existence of perceptual anisotropies among newborns and infants in the first year of life. Like older human children and adults and like other infrahuman species, human infants are not equally sensitive to all spatial orientations or to all transformations of patterns that occur in the perceptual world. The two common classes of anisotropy are especially prominent in infancy. Infants consistently find the main orthogonals salient, as shown in a variety of detection, acuity, information-processing, and preference measures. Infants also see and treat as equivalent lateral mirror-image components of visual patterns. The chapter concludes with a discussion on some theoretical interrelations between the two classes of anisotropy, the special role of the face in perceptual anisotropies, and some likely implications of infant anisotropies for the development of perception, cognition, and language in childhood.
Using a habituation/test procedure, the author investigated adults' and infants' perception of auditory-visual temporal synchrony. Participants were familiarized with a bouncing green disk and a sound that occurred each time the disk bounced. Then, they were given a series of asynchrony test trials where the sound occurred either before or after the disk bounced. The magnitude of the auditory-visual temporal asynchrony threshold differed markedly in adults and infants. The threshold for the detection of asynchrony created by a sound preceding a visible event was 65 ms in adults and 350 ms in infants and for the detection of asynchrony created by a sound following a visible event was 112 ms in adults and 450 ms in infants. Also, infants did not respond to asynchronies that exceeded intervals that yielded reliable discrimination. Infants' perception of auditory-visual temporal unity is guided by a synchrony and an asynchrony window, both of which become narrower in development.
Relations between infant visual recognition memory and later cognition have fueled interest in identifying the underlying cognitive components of this important infant ability. The present large-scale study examined three promising factors in this regard--processing speed, short-term memory capacity, and attention. Two of these factors, attention and processing speed (but, surprisingly, not short-term memory capacity), were related to visual recognition memory: Infants who showed better attention (shorter looks and more shifts) and faster processing had better recognition memory. The contributions of attention and processing speed were independent of one another and were similar at all ages studied--5, 7, and 12 months. Taken together, attention and speed accounted for 6%-9% of the variance in visual recognition memory, leaving a considerable, but not unexpected, portion of the variance unexplained.
80 male and 60 female infants were observed under 5 a priori judged levels of discrepancy to assess whether sustained attention was linearly or curvilinearly related to degree of discrepancy from an experimental standard. Following habituation, 7 1 2-month-old infants were exposed to either the repetition of the standard, a minimal, first- or second-level moderate discrepancy, or a novel stimulus having no relation to the standard. The related stimuli, varying in elongation, were sphere, pear, club, and cylinder-shaped objects; the novel stimulus was a different colored, tooth-like object. 80 infants observed the sphere as the standard and the cylinder as the second-level moderate discrepancy; 60 infants were exposed to the reverse order with the cylinder as the standard. The use of different stimuli at each discrepancy level controlled for specific stimulus effects. Habituation and recovery of responding were observed in an operant paradigm. Lever pressing, fixation, and vocalization increased most to the second-level moderate stimuli and decreased most to the familiar and novel objects; fretting was highest to the redundant stimuli and lowest to the moderate objects. There were no stimulus main effects or interactions. The results support the hypothesis of a curvilinear relation between stimulus discrepancy and sustained attention, excitement, and preference.
Utilizes the conceptual framework of C. Coomb's data theory to highlight similarities and differences between 2 representative but different discrepancy hypotheses: D. McClelland and R. Clark's hypothesis and W. Dember and R. Earl's (see record
1958-05022-001) complexity discrepancy theory. It is concluded that mapping of data into the models cannot be done unambiguously unless assumptions are made concerning as yet unspecified parameter values and properties of data. 2 different research strategies are discussed. A 2-stage strategy with simplifying assumptions is suggested as a possible approach toward quantitative specification of model parameter values. (32 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
CERTAIN CHANGES IN STIMULATION PRODUCE A PATTERN OF PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES (ORIENTING REFLEX) THAT IS PRESUMED TO SHARPEN PERCEPTION THROUGH FOCUSING ATTENTION ON SALIENT CUES. WHEN THE ORIENTING REFLEX HABITUATES TO A PARTICULAR CUE OF A COMPLEX STIMULUS, A 2ND AND PREVIOUSLY LESS SALIENT CUE MAY NOW ELICIT AN ORIENTING REFLEX AND ATTENTION WILL THEN BECOME SELECTIVE FOR THAT CUE. GIVEN CERTAIN CONDITIONS, SERIAL HABITUATION OF THE ORIENTING REFLEX TO SEVERAL CUES OF A STIMULUS COMPLEX WILL PRODUCE A CHAIN OF ATTENDING RESPONSES. WITH REPEATED PRESENTATION OF THE STIMULUS COMPLEX, THIS CHAIN WILL BECOME A SINGLE WELL-INTEGRATED MEDIATING EVENT (SCHEMA) THAT MAY BE USED TO EXPLAIN HIGHER-LEVEL PROBLEM-SOLVING BEHAVIORS. (43 REF.)
Measures of 3-month-old infants' visual fixation of each of a pair of stimuli were obtained before and after a “familiarization period” in which one of the pair was presented without the other.Under all conditions, time spent looking at the familiarized stimulus showed a downward trend during the familiarization period. No further significant results were obtained when an initially nonpreferred stimulus was familiarized.Under conditions in which the initially preferred stimulus was familiarized, it was looked at significantly less after familiarization. When stimuli differed only in form or in color, familiarization did not affect subsequent looking time for the nonfamiliarized stimulus. However, when both color and form differed, the nonfamiliarized stimulus elicited increased looking time postfamiliarization.The results indicate that 3-month-old infants can discriminate circles from crosses. Since evidence of this discrimination does not appear in spontaneous visual preference, the procedure used in this study may have methodological value.
Thirty-six newborn human infants were repeatedly exposed to one of two visual stimuli, a four-square or 144-square black and white checkerboard target, until a set criterion of habituation was demonstrated, as measured by a decrement in visual fixation time. When the habituation criterion was reached, independent groups of Ss were either presented with the same target or with a target of either moderate or large discrepancy from the standard habituation stimulus. Results indicated that (1) there was habituation of visual attention, which replicated previous findings, and suggests that some infants soon after birth are capable of storing simple visual information, and (2) following habituation female infants displayed greater recovery of attention than male infants when the moderate stimulus change was introduced.
Forty newborn human infants were repeatedly exposed to one of two visual stimuli: a 2 × 2 or 12 × 12 black and white checkerboard target until a set criterion of habituation was demonstrated, as measured by a decrement in visual fixation time. When the habituation criterion was reached, independent groups of Ss were presented with either the same target or the second target, to assess the effects of familiar and novel visual targets on recovery of the habituated response. Results indicated that Ss receiving the Same target to which they had been “familiarized” on the test trial showed no significant change in visual fixation time, while Ss receiving a novel target showed a significant increase in visual response. The current results suggest (1) that the visual response decrement displayed by the newborn can be attributed to a habituation rather than a “fatigue” process, and (2) that some infants, soon after birth, are capable of storing simple visual information as reflected in their ability to detect and respond to change in the immediate environment.
This study examined 4-month-old infants' fixation times to familiar and novel visual patterns. Thirty-two male and 32 female infants were given 12 successive 15 sec exposures to one simple geometric pattern followed by test trials consisting of two exposures to the same pattern, two to a pattern with the same form but novel color, two with a novel form but the same color, and two with both novel form and color. Results indicated habituation of fixation times to the repeated stimulus and recovery to novel stimuli, particularly in male infants. Generalization was also obtained with less recovery to patterns with only one dimension novel than to those with both novel. Most individual infants were also found to be attending to both dimensions rather than some infants attending mainly to color changes and others attending mainly to form changes.
An attempt was made to establish experimentally a new schema in infants by exposing them to a standard stimulus between their third- and fourth-month birthdays. The discrepancy hypothesis was tested by presenting the stimulus-experienced infants and a group of nonexperienced controls with the standard stimulus and three graded discrepancies from it. Magnitude of cardiac deceleration was an increasing function of discrepancy for girls but not for boys. Stimulus differences in fixation time were minimal for both sexes. The results for females supported the discrepancy hypothesis as well as the construct validity of cardiac deceleration as an index of the dynamic process of matching a new input to a schema.