Which kind of describes a lot of discussions on the Internet - people pattern-matching what they see/hear to cached thoughts in their brains, and replying to those cached thoughts instead of to what was actually said.
Now that I think about it, I could totally see a cabal of professors hiring someone to be antagonistic as a teaching moment.
Salience: facts are more prominent from either highlighting or frequency.
Priming: Recently noted topics may be recalled with less effort.
Recency: Memories from more recent times are more readily accessible.