The interactive effects of surprise and plausibility on memory

It has been demonstrated that surprising information often leads to better recall. Yet, this might not apply to information that is considered to be implausible. The present study examines how surprise and plausibility judgments relate to participants' memory for numerical statements. Participants performed an estimation task in which they were presented with an incomplete numerical fact (e.g., X out of 10 bus drivers are women) for which they were asked to provide an estimation. After being presented with an answer, they indicated how surprised they were about the answer and whether they found the answer plausible. Next, participants performed a memory test to examine the effects of surprise and plausibility on recall of the presented answers. Finally, 24-48 hr later, participants provided new estimations for the numerical statements to examine whether participants had integrated the presented answer into their knowledge representation. A U-shaped relation between surprise and memory recall was found for recall on Day 1, with unsurprising and highly surprising items being remembered better than moderately surprising items. Importantly, the relationship between surprise and recall was only found for plausible items. Next, new estimations on Day 2 indicated that unsurprising and plausible items were incorporated into participants' knowledge representation more often than surprising and implausible items. Taken together, our findings support the notion that surprise enhances memory but also show that metacognitive judgments influence this effect. Moreover, our findings revealed that enhanced recall does not necessarily mean the information is fully incorporated into participants' knowledge representation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).