Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Iconicity refers to a resemblance between word form and meaning. Previous work has shown that iconic words are learned earlier and processed faster. Here we examined whether iconicity would also affect a recognition memory task. We also manipulated the level at which items were encoded—with a focus on either their meaning or their form—in order to gain insight into the mechanism by which iconicity would affect memory. In comparison with non-iconic words, iconic words were associated with a higher false alarm rate, a lower d’ score, and a lower criterion C. We did not observe any interaction between iconicity and encoding condition. We also conducted an analysis of recognition memory megastudy data and found that iconicity was predictive of higher false alarms and a lower criterion C across 1,646 items. We interpret these results as suggesting that iconicity leads to a feeling of familiarity in recognition memory.