Surprise and Human Evolution: How a Snake Screen Enhanced Knowledge Transfer Through a Web Interface

It is reasonable to assume that enhanced cognition within the temporal vicinity of animal attacks allowed our hominid ancestors to better build and associate memories related to the animals and their typical habitat markers. This, in turn, increased their survival chances. This may be at the source of an unusual phenomenon with limited but interesting practical uses in the design of human–technology interaction interfaces for learning tasks. The phenomenon is often referred to as “flashbulb memorization ” and entails modern humans’ short-term memories being instantaneously turned into long-term memories through surprise . This chapter explores this phenomenon in the context of a computer-supported learning task, by testing the prediction that a simulated snake attack will lead to cognition enhancement within its temporal vicinity. In an experiment, those participants who were surprised by a Web-based snake screen did as much as 38% better at answering test questions for Web-based learning modules that were temporally adjacent to the snake screen.