Abstract

Image memorability refers to an intrinsic property of images that determines how well they can be remembered. Image memorability has been shown to be highly consistent across individuals. Despite its stability as a stimulus-specific trait, predicting memorability subjectively remains challenging. Previous studies have demonstrated a discrepancy between human participants' subjective ratings of their ability to remember a stimulus and their actual memory performance. We hypothesized that subjective memorability prediction is biased by consciously accessible image properties that are not directly related to memorability. To avoid such bias, in the current study, we used an indirect behavioral measure to assess image memorability. Participants were asked to encode scene images and simply press a keyboard button. Results showed that spontaneous encoding response time to an image was reliably associated with memorability. Specifically, participants exhibited faster responses to highly memorable images compared to less memorable ones. These findings indicate that the efficiency of information processing during encoding reliably predicts image memorability.