Exploring word memorability: How well do different word properties explain item free-recall probability?
- PDF / 1,814,252 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 36 Downloads / 173 Views
BRIEF REPORT
Exploring word memorability: How well do different word properties explain item free-recall probability? Christopher R. Madan 1 Accepted: 24 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract What makes some words more memorable than others? Words can vary in many dimensions, and a variety of lexical, semantic, and affective properties have previously been associated with variability in recall performance. Free recall data were used from 147 participants across 20 experimental sessions from the Penn Electrophysiology of Encoding and Retrieval Study (PEERS) data set, across 1,638 words. Here, I consider how well 20 different word properties—across lexical, semantic, and affective dimensions—relate to free recall. Semantic dimensions, particularly animacy (better memory for living), usefulness (with respect to survival; better memory for useful), and size (better memory for larger) demonstrated the strongest relationships with recall probability. These key results were then examined and replicated in the free recall data from Lau, Goh, and Yap (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71, 2207–2222, 2018), which had 532 words and 116 participants. This comprehensive investigation of a variety of word memorability demonstrates that semantic and function-related psycholinguistic properties play an important role in verbal memory processes. Keywords Episodic memory . Animacy . Usefulness . Semantic properties . Verbal memory
Some experiences are remembered better than others. While many studies have examined how different image properties can explain memorability of images (e.g., Bainbridge, Isola, & Oliva, 2013; Broers, Potter, and Nieuwenstein, 2018; Grühn & Scheibe, 2008; Isola, Xiao, Parikh, Torralba, & Oliva, 2014; Madan, Bayer, Gamer, Lonsdorf, & Sommer, 2018; Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980), our understanding of what makes a word more or less memorable is largely based on the relative influences of specific word properties—such as word imageability, frequency, and arousal—in studies where other properties are constrained. Though the use of word lists to study human memory has been a long-standing staple (Calkins, 1898; Kirkpatrick, 1894; Stoke, 1929), the literature on memorability for words is sparse (but see Christian, Bickley, Tarka, & Clayton, 1978; Rubin, 1980; Rubin & Friendly, 1986). Moreover, the generalizability of findings from image memorability are somewhat limited, as images tend to consist of many separable object ‘items’ (e.g., see * Christopher R. Madan [email protected] 1
School of Psychology, University Park, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK
Isola et al., 2014) and many images can map to a singular word (e.g., MOUNTAIN or SQUIRREL). Nonetheless, word stimuli have been common in the memory literature, as well as other areas of experimental psychology, for their ease in presenting to participants and ease for participants to report (e.g., relative to images or complex events). While exploring what makes a word memorable is of interest to memory resea
Data Loading...
