Distinctive or unusual items are more likely to be recalled than common items.
Von Restorff's 1933 finding. It is why one highlighted row in a table is remembered and why highlighting every row destroys the effect entirely.
In practice
- A safety notice in red among twelve black ones is read; a wall of red notices is wallpaper.
- A CV in a different format among forty identical ones is read, and a stack of forty different formats is not.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind