Hedwig von Restorff

Who they are: Hedwig von Restorff (1906–1962) was a German psychologist trained in the Gestalt tradition at the University of Berlin, where she worked as an assistant to Wolfgang Köhler.

The concept HaELM draws from: in a 1933 study of memory published in Psychologische Forschung, von Restorff showed that an item that differs from the others around it is more likely to be remembered. This is now called the von Restorff effect, or isolation effect. Decode treats it as a memory prediction, not an attention effect: it suggests a distinctive element is more likely to be recalled, not that the brand or the message behind it will be.

Decode articles where their thinking appears: Ramp Made Receipts Funny. I Saw It on My Way Out of O’Hare.

Source: Wikipedia, “Hedwig von Restorff”; von Restorff (1933), Psychologische Forschung, 18.