Many photographs of real-life scenes are very consistently remembered or forgotten by most people, making these images intrinsically memorable or forgettable. Although machine vision algorithms can predict a given image’s memorability very well, nothing is known about the subjective quality of these memories: are memorable images recognized based on strong feelings of familiarity or on recollection of episodic details? We tested people’s recognition memory for memorable and forgettable scenes selected from image memorability databases, which contain memorability scores for each image, based on large-scale recognition memory experiments. Specifically, we tested the effect of intrinsic memorability on recollection and familiarity using cognitive computational models based on receiver operating characteristics (ROCs; Experiment 1 and 1) and on remember/know (R/K) judgments (Experiment 1). The ROC data of Experiment 1 indicated that image memorability boosted memory strength, but did not find a specific effect on recollection or familiarity. By contrast, ROC data from Experiment 1, which was designed to facilitate encoding and, in turn, recollection, found evidence for a specific effect of image memorability on recollection. Moreover, R/K judgments showed that, on average, memorability boosts recollection rather than familiarity. However, we also found a large degree of variability in these judgments across individual images: some images actually achieved high recognition rates by exclusively boosting familiarity rather than recollection. Together, these results show that current machine vision algorithms that can predict an image’s intrinsic memorability in terms of hit rates fall short of describing the subjective quality of human memories.

许多现实生活场景的照片被大多数人非常一致地记住或遗忘，使这些图像本质上令人难忘或难忘。尽管机器视觉算法可以很好地预测给定图像的可记忆性，但对这些记忆的主观质量一无所知：令人难忘的图像是基于强烈的熟悉感还是基于对情节细节的回忆来识别的？基于大规模的识别记忆实验，我们测试了人们对从图像记忆数据库中选择的令人难忘和容易忘记的场景的识别记忆，其中包含每个图像的记忆分数。具体而言，我们使用基于接收器操作特征 (ROC; 实验 1 和 1) 以及记住/知道 (R/K) 判断（实验 1）。实验 1 的 ROC 数据表明，图像记忆力增强了记忆强度，但没有发现对回忆或熟悉度的特定影响。相比之下，来自实验 1 的 ROC 数据旨在促进编码，进而促进回忆，发现图像可记忆性对回忆的特定影响的证据。此外，R/K 判断表明，平均而言，可记忆性会促进回忆而不是熟悉。然而，我们还发现对单个图像的这些判断存在很大程度的可变性：一些图像实际上通过专门提高熟悉度而不是回忆来实现高识别率。一起，