culturally unfamiliar situations (Malcolm & Sharifian, 2002). How cultural schemas develop When one interacts with members of the same culture over and over again, or talks about certain information with them many times, cultural schemas are created and stored in one's brain. Subsequent similar instances cause the cultural schema to become more organized, abstract, and compact. As this occurs, communication becomes much easier. Nishida (1999) simply explains that experience is the force which creates cultural schemas. As people have more experiences their developing cultural schemas become more tightly organized. The information not only becomes more complex, but more useful among members of a culture, alike or different. Beyond the cognitive activity of cultural schemas is the complex pattern which occurs in the brain. When humans acquire and retain information from their surrounding environments, neural circuits are generated. Consequently, information processing experience is stored in the long-term memory. Memory representation or neural circuits created in the brain as a result of information processing are assumed to be schemas . Thus, schemas provide a foundation in the brain which helps to predict what is to be expected and looked for in certain situations. Not all schemas are uniformly important. High-level schemas are internalized and emotionally salient; likewise, when a schema is only weakly related to a person's self it becomes emotionally empty and irrelevant (Lipset, 1993). Types of cultural schemas for social interactions Cultural schemas for social interactions are cognitive structures that contain knowledge for face-to-face interactions in one's cultural environment. Nishida (1999) points out the eight primary types for generating human behavior for social interactions. These eight schemas are also referred to as Primary Social Interaction (PSI) schemas. Fact-and-concept schemas: These are pieces of general information about facts, such as Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States, and concepts, such as bicycles are vehicles that have two wheels, a seat, and pedals. Person schemas: These are knowledge about different types of people, specifically personality traits; for example, Barb is shy or Dave is outgoing. Since people have some representation or idea of what being shy or outgoing is, they tend to classify others, such as Barb and Dave, into their dominant personality traits. Self schemas: These contain people's knowledge of how they see themselves and knowledge of how others see them. Role schemas: These are knowledge about social roles that denote expected sets of behaviors of people in particular