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The Effects of Distinctiveness 1 The Von Restorff Effect: The Effects of Distinctiveness Maha Haroon Department of Psychology University of Illinois at Chicago PSCH 353: Lab in Cognition Memory Dr. Cameron 12/07/2021 Author Note Maha Haroon, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago This experiment was done for PSCH 353: Lab in Cognition Memory course at The University of Illinois at Chicago, with the helping hands of: Mirian Zamora, Maseena Ghias, and Abdalla Mohammed.

The Effects of Distinctiveness 2 Abstract The Von Restorff Effect, also known as the Isolation Effect, is the phenomenon that predicts that when many similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. This effect was named and discovered, from a German psychologist named Hedwig Von Restorff. She realizes that participants effect of recollection is better when items that are notably different from the rest in size, colour, etc, than the others. Based on this finding, human memory is still a puzzling process to science in this day of age. The humanistic ability to look at a set of items and immediately recall them, is one part of the process that has been studied. For instance, in short term memory, individuals are often able to recall information in a list or group more easily when it stands out from the other items, such as a highlighted grocery item, an odd word in a sequence, etc. To understand this effect, thirty-nice participants from The University of Illinois at Chicago undergo a recollection experiment, in which they were shown different stimuli, such as words, letters, and numbers. Each slide either contained no distinctive stimuli, or had one distinctive stimuli, such as a coloured words, letters, or digits. They were given an amount of time to recognise and recall those stimuli in any order. At the end of experiment, it is proven from this effect that participants were able to accurately recall the stimuli better when it had a distinctive feature, when it didn’t. Keywords: distinctiveness, von restorff effect, isolation effect, words, letters, numbers, recollection, recall

The Effects of Distinctiveness 3 The Von Restorff Effect: The Effects of Distinctiveness In the early 1930’s a German psychologist by the name Hedwig von Restorff introduced a new meaning to the effects of recall and memory. The Von Restorff Effect, also known as the Isolation Effect, is the phenomenon that predicts that when many similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. Based on her experiments, she found that found that when participants were presented with a list of categorically similar items with one distinctive, isolated item on the list, memory for the item was improved (Hedwig, 1933). For example, if an individual writes down a list to remember, and highlights one specific item in that list, there is a highly likely chance that individual will remember that one specific item on the list, due to the fact its characteristics was distinctive than the rest. Item in photographs that grab an individual’s attention, can also describe The Restorff effect. The phenomenon of this effect made psychologists realize the effects of working memory, deeper processing, etc. To prove Hedwig’s theory of this phenomenon, there has been evidence that shows that exposure to novel or isolated items on a list for free recall generates an ERP with a larger amplitude and this amplitude in turn predicts a higher likelihood of future recall and faster recognition of the items ( Karis et. al, 1984). As time went on, many recent different studies and research have proven Hedwig’s framework of this effect. In a study based on Quintin and Watson, their experiment focused on whether a distinguished feature affects memory. They gave participants 10 items associated with one another, such as “vegetables,” or 9 associated items, one from group A and one from a one-of-a-kind class such as “tool” (Quian & Winston, 2017, P.49). During their experiment, when the contributors had been requested to focus on item differences, the isolation impact was once eliminated; second, when the orienting project was once similarity- based, a strong isolation impact occurred (Quian & Winston, 2017, P.49). At the end of their experiment, it was proven that the distinguishing feature, or the isolated feature, played an

The Effects of Distinctiveness 4 impact on the participants memory. The stronger the isolation, the better the memory the participants had. Another research conducted by Schmidt and Bonnie, to explain The Restorff effect, compared taboo, non-threatening negative-affect, and neutral words across three experiments. Participants were given a series of words, which indicated either an emotional attachment to the participants, or a natural attachment on the participant. Their results specify “when” and “how” attention and distinctiveness work together to influence memory for emotional stimuli. (Schmidt & Bonnie, 2007, P.1905). Based on their findings, they found that emotional words were recalled better than the neutral words. In hindsight, the distinctiveness was relatively more important for the emotional memory effect than for the taboo memory effect (Schmidt & Bonnie, 2007, P.1905). Since the emotional words had a distinctive impact on the participants memory, the chance to recall that specific word, rather than a neutral word, shows how powerful The Restorff effect is. Lastly, another recent study conducted by Singer, M., Fazaluddin, A., & Andrew, K. N., showed how that the distinctiveness of unrepeated stimuli yields an enhancement of memorability, when contrasted with repeated stimuli. In their experiment, participants were shown different distinctive stimuli, in different number of times. According to their data and results, they found that the recognition-memory strength difference in participants, between unrepeated and repeated stimuli, in terms of a signal-detection measure of sensitivity, was less when the unrepeated stimuli were distinctive than when they were not distinctive (Singer et al., 2011). This experiment leads to an understanding that The Restorff effect is a lot more effective when a distinctive stimulus is repeated several times, rather than one time. All these recent studies, as well as the experiment conducted by Hedwig, intrigued us about the phenomenon of this effect. To discover the true meaning of this effect, we conducted an experiment in which we would like to know what is the accuracy rate that

The Effects of Distinctiveness 5 participants are able to recall words, letters, and digits with a distinguishing feature? The studies above conducted experiments on recollection on one stimulus, rather than a diverse amount. In our experiment, we wanted to see the effects of The Restorff effect in different stimuli. In other words, we predicted that if the stimuli have a distinguishing feature, then participants will accurately recall the stimuli. Method Participants In this experiment conducted, there was a total of 39 participants from The University of Illinois at Chicago, all from the Cognitive Psychology courses Materials To successfully complete this experiment, participants were given a reliable internet source, or could bring a source with reliable internet. Participants were also sent out a google form to keep track of their answers Procedure In this experiment, participants were told to read the consent form written in the google form. After reading and understanding the purpose of this experiment, a total of 30 trials were presented on the big screen TV. Each trial consists of words, letters, or numbers. The participants were told to recall the different slides containing either words, letter, or numbers, and enter it on the google form. They were given 5 seconds to look at the slides, and 10 seconds to write down what they can remember, in any order. At the end of the experiment, participants were told to turn in the google form. The experiment itself took about 15 minutes to complete. Participants were thanked and appreciated for their volunteerism.

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