A Measure of the Incongruity Hypothesis: Effects of Two Orienting Tasks on Memory for Targets of Categorical and Orthographic Distinctiveness

Abstract

This study examined the effects of two orienting tasks – pleasantness-judging and syllable counting–on memory
for two lists of words containing either categorically distinctive targets or orthographically distinctive targets.
Analysis of the number of filler words recalled suggested that there was a significant difference between the two
word lists, but not between the two orienting tasks. There was also a significant interaction effect between list
and task on recall for filler words. However, analysis of the number of target words recalled revealed no
significant difference between the two lists or the two tasks. As such, some of the results of this study were
inconsistent with Schmidt's (1991) Incongruity Hypothesis.