A Novel Approach to Understanding Novelty Effects in Memory. Retrieved from http://love.psy.utexas.edu/~yasu/papers/novelty.pdf

Enhanced memory for oddball items has been long established, but the basis for these effects is not well understood. The present work offers a novel way to think about novelty that clarifies the roles of isola-tion and differentiation in establishing new memo-ries. According to the isolation account, items that are highly dissimilar to other items are better re-membered. In contrast, recent category learning studies suggest that oddball items are better re-membered because they must be differentiated from other similar items. The current work pits the isola-tion and differentiation accounts against each other. The results suggest that differentiation, not isola-tion, leads to more accurate memory for deviant items. In contrast, gains for isolated items are at-tributable to reduced confusion with other items, as opposed to preferential storage