script-theory

A script-theory is a human-made cognitive construct — a model positing that human memory organizes knowledge of recurring, stereotyped events as structured sequences of actions (scripts) that enable prediction, comprehension, and recall of familiar situations. Parameters: (1) event schema — a template encoding typical agents, props, settings, and action sequences for a class of events (e.g., 'restaurant script'); (2) activation — the triggering of a script schema by situational cues in perception or context; (3) inference generation — the filling of gaps in an event narrative using script-based expectations when information is missing. Persistence mechanism: theoretical frameworks in cognitive science, AI knowledge representation, and linguistic pragmatics — maintained through teaching, model-building, and computational implementation. [formal: scriptum | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.78]