Bizarreness Effect

Memory is a complicated cognitive process that psychologists continue to research and study. The Bizarreness Effect is just one of many concepts relating to the encoding and retrieval processes of memory. The term bizarre refers to an object, sentence, or event that stands out from others because it is less common and unusual. The Bizarreness Effect pertains to the idea that when someone is presented with a bizarre sentence and a common sentence, the bizarre sentence is better remembered (Geraci, McDaniel, Miller, Hughes, 2013). Psychologists have studied whether this occurs during the encoding process or retrieval process. The encoding process starts with a sensation and is converted into a piece of information that can be stored in our brains

McDaniel (1994) created an experiment with 32 psychology students at Purdue University. First they were split into two groups of 16. They were tested in an incidental learning situation. There were two lists of 12 sentences each with 6 common sentences and 6 bizarre sentences. One list consisted of sentences where bizarre and common versions contained adjectives that were abstract. The second list contained sentences that were revised so that the abstract adjectives were changed to be more concrete. Each sentence had two target nouns and each list had two versions so that the target noun would be present in a bizarre scenario and common scenario. The students were to form a mental picture as they read the sentences and include the image of the target nouns in their mental picture. Participants were given 11 seconds to view the sentence and after that allotted time were told to rate how well they were able to visualize what they read. Once they read all the sentences, they took a five-minute survey. Next, they had to refer back to the sentences they saw earlier and recall as many of the capitalized nouns as possible (Riegler & McDaniel,

The capitalized nouns in the complex sentences received a higher recall rate than the nouns in the simple sentences. This study proves that increasing the adjectives in a sentence, increases the ability to remember target nouns for bizarre and common sentences. For simple sentences, subjects used the bizarreness of the sentence to later retrieve it. For complex sentences, certain retrieval strategies are used to retrieve the target nouns showing that other cues are used if available, instead of bizarreness (Riegler & McDaniel,