Functional role and semantic structure shape word memorability: Cue-target asymmetries in cued recall

Memorability, the tendency for an item to be consistently remembered across individuals, is often treated as an intrinsic property of stimuli, reflecting fixed characteristics of items themselves. However, models of cue-based retrieval predict that memorability should also depend on the functional role an item plays during retrieval. Using a large cued-recall dataset in which each word served both as a cue and as a target, we tested this prediction directly. Cue memorability showed substantially greater cross-participant reliability than target memorability, indicating that the cognitive processes initiating retrieval are more consistent across individuals than those involved in recovering specific memory traces. To identify the sources of this dissociation, we modeled cue and target memorability using a broad set of psycholinguistic and semantic features. Number of senses, concreteness, and word frequency selectively supported cue effectiveness, whereas number of incoming associates and morphemic complexity predicted target retrievability However, at the level of semantic categories, cue and target memorability converged almost perfectly, consistent with Aka et al. (2023). This result suggests that category-level structure captures stable conceptual regularities that shape memorability across retrieval roles. Together, these findings suggest that memorability reflects an interaction between semantic structure and retrieval processes, with distinct lexical and semantic properties supporting the effectiveness of items as cues versus their retrievability as targets.