Schedule of Events | Symposia

Image Memorability Shapes the Temporal Structure of Memory

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Marianna Lamprou Kokolaki¹ (lkmarian@hotmail.com), Virginie van Wassenhove¹; ¹CEA/DRF/Inst. Joliot, NeuroSpin; INSERM, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit; Université Paris Saclay, Gif/Yvette, France

Image memorability is an intrinsic property of visual stimuli that correlates with the likelihood of an image being remembered. The memorability and the perceived duration of an image are both experiential aspects of stimuli that have recently been shown to be interrelated (Ma et al., 2024). To retain the temporal structure of episodes in memory, detailed information about event sequences—such as temporal distances between items—must be preserved. The general context in which items are embedded acts as a scaffold that aids in the encoding, organization, and retrieval of specific events. Stimulus properties, such as memorability, may also play a crucial role in shaping this temporal structure of episodes in memory. In an online study (n=33), participants actively viewed sequences of either memorable or forgettable images, followed by a judgment of the temporal distance between pairs of images from each sequence using a Visual Analog Scale. Our findings reveal that memorability influences temporal memory: highly memorable images are perceived as temporally closer in memory than forgettable ones. Moreover, shifts in memorability within a sequence (e.g., transitioning from low to high memorability) serve as boundaries, segmenting the sequence into distinct events. These boundaries alter temporal distance judgments for items both within and across these groups, with pairs spanning memorability groups perceived as farther apart compared to pairs within the same group. Our results demonstrate that changes in stimulus properties influencing internal processing, such as memorability, can structure the temporal organization of episodic memory.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic