Understanding the memory advantage of counterintuitive concepts

Abstract Previous work suggests that concepts that are only slightly counterintuitive are more memorable than concepts that are intuitive or overly counterintuitive (Boyer, 1994; Boyer & Ramble, 2001), although causes for this memory advantage have been debated (Barrett, 2008; Upal, 2009). We conducted four experiments to better understand the cognitive processes that underlie memory for counterintuitive concepts by recording both reading time and recall of intuitive and counterintuitive statements. Experiments 1 and 2 suggested that additional time spent processing material facilitates memory performance, even if that material is intuitive. However, the results from Experiments 3 and 4 indicate that time alone does not account for the memory advantage previously observed. The implications of the results are discussed.

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