Understanding the Role of Context on Memory for Maximally Counterintuitive Concepts
Journal: Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Cognitive Studies Linguistics
DOI: 10.1558/jcsr.39064
Abstract:
The current study examined how contextual information, defined asinformation represented at the level of the situation model, influencedmemory for minimally and maximally counterintuitive stories. Thefirst two experiments investigated whether the presence of explicitinstructions to make sense of "strange information" in the storiesinfluenced memory for maximally counterintuitive stories. Althoughno such effect was observed, post hoc analyses indicated that maximallycounterintuitive stories that support a global inference that integratesthe counterintuitive ideas are better recalled compared to storiesthat do not support such an inference. A third experiment was conductedto directly test the "global-inference" hypothesis. The resultsfrom the three experiments highlight the significant role of inferentialprocessing in the integration of counterintuitive ideas, especially formaximally counterintuitive studies.
Author: Mary Harmon-Vukić, M. Afzal Upal
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