What if your bad memory wasn’t entirely your fault? Students everywhere have been told to study more, try harder, pay more attention, and just generally be better. You’re told all this, and more, to remember the information you need to get the grade. It’s entirely on the student to learn. The Fukuda Lab, with its work on memory, is here to say otherwise.

In previous studies, researchers presented the same set of images to thousands of people and asked them to remember these images. These images were of real-world objects, such as asharpener or a picture frame. Surprisingly, some images were consistently forgotten by a large group of participants. Other images were consistently remembered by the same group of participants.

This phenomenon suggests some images are easier to remember or more memorable than others. Based on these findings, the researchers proposed that something inherent to the image determines its memorability. According to Dr. Keisuke Fukuda, principal investigator of the appropriately named Fukuda Lab, “A big chunk of memory variability is actually attributed to the stimulus.”

What does this mean? When you fail to remember something, it might not have to do with you at all. Maybe, what you’re studying, is just not memorable.

In 2022, Saito, Kolisnyk, and Fukuda reported a study in which they presented images to participants. They asked them to rate how memorable each image would be to an average person. They found that certain pictures were consistently rated as memorable or forgettable across individuals.  Furthermore, these pictures’ perceived memorability predicted how well each item was actually remembered by a different group of people. However, this prediction wasn’t perfect – some images that were perceived as memorable ended up being forgotten. Other images that were perceived as forgettable were remembered.