The way people think about and act in marital and family relationships can be represented in terms of schemas and types. On the individual level, schemas determine communication behaviors in these relationships and a person’s psychological and behavioral responses to these relationships. On the social level, typologies show how laypersons and scholars perceive of and evaluate relationships. Together, schemas and types play an important role in conducting and interpreting marital and family relationships.

Mental schemas are generally defined as cognitive structures representing some concept (or object) that contain acquired knowledge of the attributes and functions of the concept. In other words, mental schemas are patterns of simultaneous activation of knowledge bits stored in long-term memory that together represent a coherent representation of the concept or object. Thus, relationship schemas in general are mental representations of relationships, and family and marital schemas specifically are mental representations of one’s familial and marital relationships, respectively.

Littlejohn, Stephen W and Karen A.Floss. (2009). Encyclopedia of Communication Theory.USA:SAGE.654

Penanggungjawab naskah :

Gayes Mahestu
Edwina Ayu Kustiawan