The effect of incongruency and cognitive load on short-term verbatim and gist memory in the Conjoint Recognition paradigm
Christoph Stahl, Karl Christoph Klauer · 2018
The present research investigated effects of schema incongruency and cognitive load at encoding on short-term memory. Memory for items that are incongruent with an active schema is sometimes found to be more accurate than memory for schema-congruent items. A recent model predicts that this effect is especially pronounced under cognitive load. Two studies manipulated cognitive load and schema incongruency of study items. Verbatim and gist memory for the items was assessed. According to the attention-elaboration (AE) framework, an incongruency advantage is predicted for verbatim and gist memory that is expected to decrease under cognitive load. According to the Encoding Flexibility model (EFM), as cognitive load increases, verbatim memory should favor incongruent over congruent items and gist memory should be superior for congruent items. Based upon a multinomial model that dissociates verbatim and gist memory, the results provide direct evidence for a verbatim and a gist memory advantage for expectancyincongruent information, confirming AE predictions. Consistent with the EFM, the verbatim incongruency advantage was increased under moderate (but not strong) cognitive load. An integrative framework is proposed to account for the results.