Distinctive perceptual processing and memory

The theoretical construct of distinctiveness emphasizes that the representation of unique properties enhances memory. Hunt and Elliott (1980) provided evidence for this approach by demonstrating that orthographic distinctiveness enhanced memory. In this paper, we provide further evidence that distinctive perceptual attributes enhance memory by demonstrating that distinctive orthographic-to-phonological mapping enhances memory. Our experiments show that exception words are recalled better than regular words and that this advantage occurs with visual, but not with auditory, presentation. In addition, the recall advantage for exception words is independent of the effect of orthographic distinctiveness and occurs in a variety of encoding contexts. We assume that a distinctive orthographic-to-phenological mapping enhances recall by providing discriminative cues during retrieval. (C) 1997 Academic Press.