ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2023
Memory for artwork is predictable.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reverse engineering what makes a symbol memorable.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Natural warning signals unexpectedly shape human metamemory ratings but not image recognition success.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Semantic centrality and emotional valence contribute to word memorability in an associative memory task for Chinese words.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Greater Interference From Multiple Exposures During Memory Retrieval Drives More Memorable and Forgettable Experiences.Hippocampus · 2026Article
- The temporal and spatial properties of memorability reveal insights into the art creation process.Cognition · 2026Article
- Scene image memorability is learnable via feedback.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The psychophysics of style.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Aesthetic motivation shapes tourist revisit intention via push pull theory.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Image memorability depends on interference in memory.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Neuroscientific Analysis of Logo Design: Implications for Luxury Brand Marketing.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The memorability of voices is predictable and consistent across listeners.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Individual gaze predicts individual scene descriptions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Memorability of novel words correlates with anterior fusiform activity during reading.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Tell me why: the missing w in episodic memory's what, where, and when.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Review
- Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa).Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Viewing art is often seen as a highly personal and subjective experience. However, are there universal factors that make a work of art memorable? We conducted three experiments, where we recorded online memory performance for 4,021 paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, tested in-person memory after an unconstrained visit to the Art Institute, and obtained abstract attribute measures such as beauty and emotional valence for these pieces. Participants showed significant agreement in their memories both online and in-person, suggesting that pieces have an intrinsic "memorability" based solely on their visual properties that is predictive of memory in a naturalistic museum setting. Importantly, ResMem, a deep learning neural network designed to estimate image memorability, could significantly predict memory both online and in-person based on the images alone, and these predictions could not be explained by other low- or high-level attributes like color, content type, aesthetics, and emotion. A regression comprising ResMem and other stimulus factors could predict as much as half of the variance of in-person memory performance. Further, ResMem could predict the fame of a piece, despite having no cultural or historical knowledge. These results suggest that perceptual features of a painting play a major role in influencing its success, both in memory for a museum visit and in cultural memory over generations.
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