Semantic centrality and emotional valence contribute to word memorability in an associative memory task for Chinese words

TL;DR

This study explores how word memorability is influenced by semantic connections and emotional content in Chinese language memory tasks.

Contribution

The study reveals novel insights into how lower semantic centrality and emotional consistency enhance memorability in Chinese words.

Findings

Words with lower semantic centrality were more memorable in Chinese associative memory tasks.

Emotionally consistent pairs (positive-positive or negative-negative) showed a memory advantage over neutral pairs.

Semantic centrality and emotional consistency had additive effects on memory performance without interaction.

Abstract

Memorability, an intrinsic property of stimuli, reflects the consistent likelihood of a stimulus being remembered across individuals. Recent research has examined English word memorability in an associative memory task and found that the overall semantic connection of a word to other words (termed semantic centrality) predicts its memorability, with stronger semantic centrality associated with a greater likelihood of successful recall. However, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other languages. Moreover, whether and how emotional content contributes to word memorability has not been fully explored. Of particular interest is emotional consistency: whether emotional words that are of the same or different valence (e.g., positive with positive vs. positive with negative) exhibit a mnemonic advantage over neutral words in associative memory. To address these issues, we examined semantic centrality and emotional consistency as predictors of memory performance in three visually-presented cued-recall experiments using Chinese words. Participants encoded pairs of nouns and were then required to recall target words in response to cue words. We found that both semantic centrality and emotional consistency contributed significantly to word memory: surprisingly, and in contrast to previous work in the English language, words with lower semantic centrality were associated with higher memorability; broad emotional consistency (non-neutral cue-target pairs) and positive emotional consistency (positive-positive pairs) both exhibited memory advantages. Notably, our two factors of interest did not interact with each other and demonstrated additive effects when explaining memory performance. Our results provide insights into word memorability, specifically as it relates to the Chinese language, and potential contributions of semantics and emotion.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-37531-w.

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