The Role of Mental Elaborations in Making Counterintuitive Ideas Memorable

نویسندگان

  • Mary Harmon-Vukic
  • M. Afzal Upal
  • Kelly Sheehan
چکیده

Previous work has suggested that concepts that are only slightly counterintuitive are more memorable than concepts that are intuitive or overly counterintuitive (Boyer, 1994; Boyer and Ramble, 2001) even though causes for this memory advantage have been debated (Barrett, 2008; Upal, 2009). This paper presents four studies conducted to better understand the cognitive processes that underlie memory for counterintuitive concepts. They suggest that elaborative processing of counterintuitive concepts may be the primary driver of the MCI effect rather than domain violation.

برای دانلود رایگان متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

What is More Memorable, Counterintuitive Concepts Interpreted Metaphorically or Literally?

A survey of randomly selected sample of television advertisements indicated that a significant number of these ads contain counterintuitive concepts. This makes sense in light of recent findings that suggest that minimally counterintuitive ideas are more memorable than intuitive ideas. However, a subsequent experiment performed to investigate the role of context in the memorability of such conc...

متن کامل

On Attractiveness of Surprising Ideas: How Memory for Counterintuitive Ideas Drives Cultural Dynamics

The emerging field of cognition and culture has had some success in explaining the spread of counterintuitive religious concepts around the world. However, researchers have been reluctant to extend its findings to explain the widespread occurrence of counterintuitive ideas in general. This article suggests a way to generalize the minimal counterintuitive hypothesis, which argues that such ideas...

متن کامل

Evaluation of Factors Affecting the increase of Liveliness in the Community Complex

According to the human's life style in this time and reduction of appropriate places for attendance of people¸ continuance of human's social life and improvement of human's social culture¸ people should be reconciled to the community complex by making essential bases. Social places belong to the all citizens and it defines by humans’ activities. So by making suitable potentials such as liveline...

متن کامل

The Optimal Cognitive Template of Minimally Counterintuitive Narratives

After studying the differences between culturally successful and unsuccessful folk tales, Norenzayan et al. (2006) recently postulated that culturally successful folk tales share a structure. In particular, they argued that having two or three minimally counterintuitive concepts made a story more memorable which in turn gave it transmission advantages allowing it to become widespread. This pape...

متن کامل

Running head: RECALL OF MINIMALLY COUNTERINTUITIVE CONCEPTS Melting lizards and crying mailboxes: Children’s preferential recall of minimally counterintuitive concepts

Previous research with adults suggests that a catalog of minimally counterintuitive concepts, which underlies supernatural or religious concepts, may constitute a cognitive optimum, and is therefore cognitively encoded and culturally transmitted more successfully than either entirely intuitive concepts or maximally counterintuitive concepts. The current study examines whether children’s concept...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2011