Porubanova Michaela, Shaw Daniel Joel, McKay Ryan, Xygalatas Dimitris
Department of Psychology, Farmingdale State College, Farmingdale, New York, United States of America; Laboratory for the Experimental Study of Religion, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
Social and Behavioural Neuroscience Research Group, Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
PLoS One. 2014 Apr 8;9(4):e90684. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0090684. eCollection 2014.
Previous research has shown that ideas which violate our expectations, such as schema-inconsistent concepts, enjoy privileged status in terms of memorability. In our study, memory for concepts that violate cultural (cultural schema-level) expectations (e.g., "illiterate teacher", "wooden bottle", or "thorny grass") versus domain-level (ontological) expectations (e.g., "speaking cat", "jumping maple", or "melting teacher") was examined. Concepts that violate cultural expectations, or counter-schematic, were remembered to a greater extent compared with concepts that violate ontological expectations and with intuitive concepts (e.g., "galloping pony", "drying orchid", or "convertible car"), in both immediate recall, and delayed recognition tests. Importantly, concepts related to agents showed a memory advantage over concepts not pertaining to agents, but this was true only for expectation-violating concepts. Our results imply that intuitive, everyday concepts are equally attractive and memorable regardless of the presence or absence of agents. However, concepts that violate our expectations (cultural-schema or domain-level) are more memorable when pertaining to agents (humans and animals) than to non-agents (plants or objects/artifacts). We conclude that due to their evolutionary salience, cultural ideas which combine expectancy violations and the involvement of an agent are especially memorable and thus have an enhanced probability of being successfully propagated.
先前的研究表明，违背我们预期的观念，比如与图式不一致的概念，在记忆方面享有特殊地位。在我们的研究中，考察了对违背文化（文化图式层面）预期的概念（例如，“文盲教师”“木制瓶子”或“带刺的草”）与违背领域层面（本体论）预期的概念（例如，“会说话的猫”“会跳的枫树”或“融化的教师”）的记忆情况。在即时回忆和延迟识别测试中，与违背本体论预期的概念以及直观概念（例如，“奔腾的小马”“干枯的兰花”或“敞篷汽车”）相比，违背文化预期的概念，即反图式概念，被记住的程度更高。重要的是，与施动者相关的概念比与非施动者相关的概念具有记忆优势，但这仅适用于违背预期的概念。我们的研究结果表明，无论有无施动者，直观的日常概念都同样具有吸引力且易于记忆。然而，违背我们预期（文化图式或领域层面）的概念，当与施动者（人类和动物）相关时比与非施动者（植物或物体/人工制品）相关时更易被记住。我们得出结论，由于其在进化上的显著性，将违背预期与施动者的参与相结合的文化观念特别容易被记住，因此更有可能成功传播。
