"Where Did I See That?" b.k.a. Read, Dismiss, Remember (RDR)

I was driving home today from Barnes & Noble, and I looked over at the bag my new book lay in. If you haven't seen the Barnes & Noble bags they are covered in quotes from different literary books. Anyway, I looked over at the bag then up at various signs along the road, including a gas station. And suddenly I remembered.

Wife.

I read the word "wife" somewhere, but I couldn't remember where. Nor could I remember actually reading any of the signs or even the bag. I looked several times over at the bag, but had to concentrate on the road so I didn't actually find where the word was.

But it got me thinking: how amazing the brain that it reads so many words in a brief glance and then immediately dismisses each and every one of them.

I don't know if this happens for many other people. But it happens to me all the time. Typically I'm so determined that I look at every sign and written word around me to find where that specific word I read was.

There are even times where I'll remember a word that wasn't actually written, but parts of that word were written close to each other and my brain put them together. The one example I can think of is those signs in the caf on each table, I always see the word "Roswell," but it doesn't say "Roswell" anywhere on it. I think it says "well" and then "ros" is the end of another word two lines above it.

Weird right?

I just tried to Google search the idea to see if any professional research has been done about this, but nothing came up.

It's possible that I could be crazy and this could be nothing. Or this could be an incredible feat of the brain's power. Or maybe I was abducted by aliens and hypnotized to only remember the words "wife" and "Roswell."

Well the second makes sense, not so much the first.

Thoughts?