Tracing the emergence of the memorability benefit

Abstract

Some visual stimuli are consistently better remembered than others across individuals, due to variations in memorability (the stimulus-intrinsic property that determines ease of encoding into visual long-term memory (VLTM)). However, it remains unclear what cognitive processes give rise to this mnemonic benefit. One possibility is that this benefit is imbued within the capacity-limited bottleneck of VLTM encoding, namely visual working memory (VWM). More precisely, memorable stimuli may be preferentially encoded into VLTM because fewer cognitive resources are required to store them in VWM (efficiency hypothesis). Alternatively, memorable stimuli may be more competitive in obtaining cognitive resources than forgettable stimuli, leading to more successful storage in VWM (competitiveness hypothesis). Additionally, the memorability benefit might emerge post-VWM, specifically, if memorable stimuli are less prone to be forgotten (i.e., are “stickier”) than forgettable stimuli after they pass through the encoding bottleneck (stickiness hypothesis). To test this, we conducted two experiments to examine how memorability benefits emerge by manipulating the stimulus memorability, set size, and degree of competition among stimuli as participants encoded them in the context of a working memory task. Subsequently, their memory for the encoded stimuli was tested in a VLTM task. In the VWM task, performance was better for memorable stimuli compared to forgettable stimuli, supporting the efficiency hypothesis. In addition, we found that when in direct competition, memorable stimuli were also better at attracting limited VWM resources than forgettable stimuli, supporting the competitiveness hypothesis. However, only the efficiency advantage translated to a performance benefit in VLTM. Lastly, we found that memorable stimuli were less likely to be forgotten after they passed through the encoding bottleneck imposed by VWM, supporting the “stickiness” hypothesis. Thus, our results demonstrate that the memorability benefit develops across multiple cognitive processes.