Expectation violation enhances short-term source memory

Recent studies of short-term source amnesia demonstrated that source information is rapidly forgotten in memory, reflecting a highly selective mode of memory encoding. In this study, we explored the flexibility of memory selection by investigating whether short-term source amnesia is affected by expectation violations. In seven experiments, we first replicated the short-term source amnesia phenomenon and then induced various forms of expectation violations. The results consistently showed that the short-term source amnesia was significantly reduced or attenuated when expectation violation occurred, indicating a strengthening effect of expectation violation on short-term source memory. This effect occurred quite quickly, nearly at the same time as the occurrence of unexpected events. Moreover, the source memory was improved even when the unexpected events were completely irrelevant to the task set or target stimuli. These findings suggest that short-term memory tends to encode and maintain more detailed source information when encountering expectation violations, which might be an adaptive mechanism for handling unexpected environmental changes.