Memorability of novel words correlates with anterior fusiform activity during reading

Our memory for the words we already know is best predicted by their associated meanings. However, the factors that influence whether we will remember a new word after we see it for the first time are unclear. We record memory performance for 2100 novel pseudowords across 1804 participants during a continuous recognition task. Participants show significant agreement across individuals for which novel words were memorable or forgettable, suggesting an intrinsic memorability for individual pseudowords. Pseudowords that are similar to low-frequency known words, with sparse orthographic neighbourhoods and rarely occurring letter pairs, are more memorable. Further, using intracranial recordings in 36 epilepsy patients we show a region in the anterior fusiform cortex that shows sensitivity to the memorability of these pseudowords. These results suggest that known words in our lexicon act as a scaffold for remembering novel word forms, with rare and unique known words providing the best support for novel word learning.