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

Memorability 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 markedly 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 traces. To identify the sources of this dissociation, we modeled cue and target memorability using a broad set of psycholinguistic and semantic network features. The analyses revealed both shared and role-specific predictors: degree centrality, concreteness and word frequency selectively supported cue effectiveness, whereas morphemic complexity predicted target retrievability. Consistent with Aka et al. (2023), cue and target memorability converged almost perfectly when examined at the level of semantic categories, suggesting that category-level structure captures stable conceptual regularities that shape memorability across roles. Together, these findings indicate that memorability is a hierarchical property of semantic representation, stable at the level of categories but flexibly modulated by the functional role of individual items during retrieval.