Abstract
Bizarre items are more easily recalled than items that are common. This bizarreness effect has been found across a wide range of stimulus materials. The previous studies have suggested that, however, typically colored stimuli were remembered more accurately than atypically colored stimuli. The purpose of the current study is to explore a little further into this color typicality effect. In a learning session, participants judged 60 line drawings on its recognizability. The drawings were colored typically, atypically, or strangely. This was followed by a recognition test session. Participants were assigned to a color recognition condition, where they were shown colored stimuli, or to a monotone condition. Color typicality had not significant effect on the recognition rate. However, the participants in the monotone condition made more recognition errors to the bizarre color stimuli than to the atypical color stimuli, only when the bizarre color object was not easily recognizable.
