Surprise and schema strength

Through 4 experiments, the author investigated the effects of stimuli discrepant with schemas of varying strength on 3 components of surprise: the interruption of ongoing activities (indexed by response time increase), the focusing of attention on the schema-discrepant event (indexed by memory performance), and the feeling of surprise (indexed by self-reports). Response times were consistently found to increase with schema strength. This effect was attributed to the increasing difficulty of schema revision. In contrast, memory for the schema-discrepant event was not affected by schema strength, supporting the hypothesis that schema-discrepant stimuli are stored in memory with a distinct tag. Finally, self-reports of surprise intensity varied with schema strength only if they were made immediately after the surprising event without any intervening questions, suggesting that self-reports of surprise are highly susceptible to memory distortions.