ScienceDaily 9/16:
The idea is that when you're exposed to something that fundamentally does not make sense, your brain is going to respond by looking for some other kind of structure within your environment.
A group of subjects were asked to read an abridged and slightly edited version of Kafka's "The Country Doctor," which involves a nonsensical –– and in some ways disturbing –– series of events. The subjects were then asked to complete an artificial-grammar learning task in which they were exposed to hidden patterns in letter strings.
People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings –– clearly they were motivated to find structure, but what's more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did.
