Functional Role and Semantic Structure Shape Word Memorability: Cue–Target Asymmetries in Cued Recall

Abstract

Abstract

Memorability, the tendency for an item to be consistently remembered acrossindividuals, is often treated as an intrinsic property of stimuli, reflecting fixedcharacteristics of items themselves. However, models of cue-based retrievalpredict that memorability should also depend on the functional role an itemplays during retrieval. Using a large cued-recall dataset in which each wordserved both as a cue and as a target, we tested this prediction directly.Cue memorability showed substantially greater cross-participant reliabilitythan target memorability, indicating that the cognitive processes initiatingretrieval are more consistent across individuals than those involved in recoveringspecific memory traces. To identify the sources of this dissociation, wemodeled cue and target memorability using a broad set of psycholinguisticand semantic features. Number of senses, concreteness, and word frequencyselectively supported cue effectiveness, whereas number of incoming associatesand morphemic complexity predicted target retrievability. However,at the level of semantic categories, cue and target memorability convergedalmost perfectly, consistent with Aka et al. (2023). This result suggests thatcategory-level structure captures stable conceptual regularities that shapememorability across retrieval roles. Together, these findings suggest thatmemorability reflects an interaction between semantic structure and retrievalprocesses, with distinct lexical and semantic properties supporting the effectivenessof items as cues versus their retrievability as targets.