Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine why a deviant news story such as “Man bites dog” is more memorable than “Dog bites man.” Distinctiveness and imagery present two competing theoretical positions to explain the advantage that deviant news events have over nondeviant events. While the distinctiveness hypothesis is based on schema incongruence, the imagery hypothesis is based on Paivio's dual coding theory. Findings from two experiments support the imagery hypothesis, which suggests that imagery-evoking potential of deviant news is a better predictor of recall than schema incongruity. The advantage in recall for deviant news almost disappeared for high deviance/low imagery news events. Further, path analysis from both experiments indicates that there is no direct path between deviance and recall, but only an indirect path through imagery. In sum, this paper highlights the importance of imagery in news language and its potential impact on memory and learning.
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