Further constraints on the bizarreness effect: elaboration at encoding

Abstract

In this study, we attempted to determine why the mnemonic benefit of bizarreness is not found with the use of complex sentences (i.e., those containing additional modifiers of nouns) as stimuli. Several explanations were investigated, including the idea that complexity reduces the imageability of the sentence and the idea that complexity itself is mnemonically beneficial. The results of four experiments favored the latter explanation. We suggest that the cues associated with the complexity of the sentence provide more effective or salient retrieval cues than do those associated with sentence bizarreness. Consequently, the mnemonic benefit of bizarreness appears to occur only with relatively impoverished encoding contexts (e.g., simple, unelaborated sentences).