The Restorff Effect

You may not know this, but all modern (and not so) journalists, designers, directors, game developers or artists use the so-called Restorff effect. And even you. Using it, you can pay attention to a certain object, capture the focus of a person and make you remember what you need.

This is a general pattern. We better remember the word or object if it or it will differ from the others, for example, size, shape, color. Many people use this technique constantly: making a shopping list, they emphasize the name of one product or highlight it with a bright color to indicate to itself the importance of this particular purchase.

Example

Try to remember the following list of words in 5 seconds:

• Jump
• Cut
• Escape
• To fly
• Blue platypus
• To read
• Build
• To lie

The chance that you will definitely remember the phrase "blue platypus" is very large, because it differs from the remaining words in that it is a noun, physically longer, and also written in italic bold. Of course, this is a very obvious example, but this will allow you to memorize it for a long time (the Restorff effect in the square).

However, the Restorff effect has the opposite effect. If you select a certain word, it will surely take away most of your attention and other words will be remembered worse.