image: Per-participant-recall of words that included either appealing, neutral or unappealing phonemes: Percentage of participants recalling the individual pseudowords.
Credit: Matzinger, Košić., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A rose by any other name? Not necessarily—how words sound aesthetically correlates with their memorability, study finds
Article URL: https://plos.io/4a5P0f8
Article title: Phonemic composition influences words’ aesthetic appeal and memorability
Author countries: Austria
Funding: This work was supported by a Disruptive Innovation Grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Science Fund (grant number: DI_2023-108_MATZINGER_BEALP) awarded to Theresa Matzinger. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Journal
PLOS One
Article Title
Phonemic composition influences words’ aesthetic appeal and memorability
Article Publication Date
3-Dec-2025
COI Statement
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.