Well-structured knowledge allows us to quickly understand the world around us and make informed decisions to adequately control behavior. Knowledge structures, or schemas, are presumed to aid memory encoding and consolidation of new experiences so we cannot only remember the past, but also guide behavior in the present and predict the future. However, very strong schemas can also lead to unwanted side effects such as false memories and misconceptions. To overcome this overreliance on a schema, we should aim to create robust schemas that are on the one hand strong enough to help to remember and predict, but also malleable enough to avoid such undesirable side effects. This raises the question as to whether there are ways to deliberately influence knowledge construction processes, with the goal to reach such optimally balanced schemas. Here, we will discuss how the mnemonic processes in our brains build long-term knowledge and, more specifically, how different phases of memory formation (encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation) contribute to this schema build-up. We finally provide ways how to best keep a balance between generalized semantic and detailed episodic memories, which can prove very useful in, e.g., educational settings.

结构良好的知识使我们能够快速了解​​周围的世界并做出明智的决策以充分控制行为。知识结构或图式被认为有助于记忆编码和巩固新经验，因此我们不仅可以记住过去，还可以指导当前的行为并预测未来。然而，非常强的模式也会导致不必要的副作用，例如错误记忆和误解。为了克服对模式的过度依赖，我们应该致力于创建强大的模式，一方面足够强大以帮助记忆和预测，但也有足够的可塑性以避免此类不良副作用。这就提出了一个问题：是否有办法故意影响知识构建过程，以达到这种最佳平衡模式。在这里，我们将讨论大脑中的助记过程如何建立长期知识，更具体地说，记忆形成的不同阶段（编码、巩固、检索和重新巩固）如何有助于这种图式的建立。我们最终提供了如何最好地在广义语义和详细情景记忆之间保持平衡的方法，这在教育环境等领域非常有用。