Illusions of Memory

A sentence that is printed in a clear font or has been repeated will be fluently processed with cognitive ease. Hearing a speaker when you are in a good mood, or even when you have a pencil stuck crosswise in your mouth to make you smile, also induces cognitive ease. Conversely, you experience cognitive strain when you read instructions in a poor font, or in faint colors, or worded in complicated language - and even when you frown. Illusions of remembering the word illusion brings visual illusions to mind, because we are all familiar with pictures that mislead. But vision is not the only domain of illusions: memory is also susceptible to them, as is thinking more generally.