Novelty is defined as the part of an experience that is not yet represented by memory
systems. Novelty has been claimed to exert various memory-enhancing effects. A pioneering
study by Wittmann et al. (2007) has shown that memory formation may even benefit from
the expectation of novelty. We aimed to replicate this assumed memory effect in four
behavioral studies. However, our results do not support the idea that anticipated
novel stimuli are more memorable than unexpected novelty. In our experiments, we systematically
manipulated the novelty predicting cues to ensure that the expectations were correctly
formed by the participants, however, the results showed that there was no memory enhancement
for expected novel pictures in any of the examined indices, thus we could not replicate
the main behavioral finding of Wittmann et al. (2007). These results call into question
the original effect, and we argue that this fits more into current thinking on memory
formation and brain function in general. Our results are more consistent with the
view that unexpected stimuli are more likely to be retained by memory systems. Predictive
coding theory suggests that unexpected stimuli are prioritized by the nervous system
and this may also benefit memory processes. Novel stimuli may be unexpected and thus
recognized better in some experimental setups, yet novelty and unexpectedness do not
always coincide. We hope that our work can bring more consistency in the literature
on novelty, as educational methods in general could also benefit from this clarification.
