Response set effects in recognition memory

In three experiments, Ss responded to individual digits or letters according to whether or not each was in some prememorized list. There were either two possible responses (yes-no condition) or a single response (yes-only and no-only conditions). With memory sets of one, two, or four digits, RT was a linear function of memory set size. The slope of the function was least under the yes-only condition and greatest under the yes-no condition. Nonspecific practice had little effect on any of the slopes. With memory sets of 4, 8, or 12 letters, the slopes under the yes-only and yes-no conditions did not seem to differ, and practice with specific sets flattened the function considerably in both cases. Overall, the errors under the yes-no condition were mostly false alarms, those under the no-only condition mostly misses, and those under the yes-no condition were divided about equally. The results are interpreted partially in terms of a multiple-observations model of decision time.     

Explaining developmental reversals in false memory

We report the first demonstration that a simple, theory-driven manipulation produces opposite developmental trends in false memory for the same information. When 6-, 10-, and 14-year-olds studied lists containing exemplars of familiar taxonomic categories, false memory for the same unpresented items (category exemplars and labels) increased with age if list items were semantically related but decreased with age if semantic relations could not be formed among list items. A control experiment ruled out the hypothesis that these results were due to young children having generic deficits in forming relations among list items.     

Response deadline and subjective awareness in recognition memory

Level of processing and generation effects were replicated in separate experiments in which recognition memory was tested using either short (500 ms) or long (1500 ms) response deadlines. These effects were similar at each deadline. Moreover, at each deadline these effects were associated with subsequent reports of remembering, not of knowing. And reports of both knowing and remembering increased following the longer deadline. These results imply that knowing does not index an automatic familiarity process, as conceived in some dual-process models of recognition, and that both remembering and knowing increase with the slower, more controlled processing permitted by the longer response time.     

Developmental reversals in false memory: Effects of emotional valence and arousal

Do the emotional valence and arousal of events distort children’s memories? Do valence and arousal modulate counterintuitive age increases in false memory? We investigated those questions in children, adolescents, and adults using the Cornell/Cortland Emotion Lists, a word list pool that induces false memories and in which valence and arousal can be manipulated factorially. False memories increased with age for unpresented semantic associates of word lists, and net accuracy (the ratio of true memory to total memory) decreased with age. These surprising developmental trends were more pronounced for negatively valenced materials than for positively valenced materials, they were more pronounced for high-arousal materials than for low-arousal materials, and developmental increases in the effects of arousal were small in comparison with developmental increases in the effects of valence. These findings have ramifications for legal applications of false memory research; materials that share the emotional hallmark of crimes (events that are negatively valenced and arousing) produced the largest age increases in false memory and the largest age declines in net accuracy.     

Developmental reversals in false memory: a review of data and theory

Can susceptibility to false memory and suggestion increase dramatically with age? The authors review the theoretical and empirical literatures on this counterintuitive possibility. Until recently, the well-documented pattern was that susceptibility to memory distortion had been found to decline between early childhood and young adulthood. That pattern is the centerpiece of much expert testimony in legal cases involving child witnesses and victims. During the past 5 years, however, several experiments have been published that test fuzzy-trace theory's prediction that some of the most powerful forms of false memory in adults will be greatly attenuated in children. Those experiments show that in some common domains of experience, in which false memories are rooted in meaning connections among events, age increases in false memory are the rule and are sometimes accompanied by net declines in the accuracy of memory. As these experiments are strongly theory-driven, they have established that developmental improvements in the formation of meaning connections are necessary and sufficient to produce age increases in false memory.     

Group collaboration in recognition memory

Group collaboration was examined in item and associative recognition. The present study distinguishes between group effects versus collaborative processes and defines the latter as interactive information exchange among group members. By that definition, many group effects do not involve collaboration. For example, group performance can exceed individual performance by pooling the increased resources of the group. Specifically, a group advantage can be obtained by deferring to a majority vote or to the group's best member. For both item and associative recognition, a group advantage was obtained that could not be accounted for by resource pooling. Collaborative facilitation was shown reliably in recognizing targets but not for rejecting distractors.     

Age differences in recognition memory

It is generally believed that short-term memory (STM) performance decreases from maturity to old age, but the present paper questions the generality of this conclusion. The first experiment reported is a short-term recognition probe study—no significant age differences were found in either acquisition or the rate of forgetting. It is suggested that age decrements in STM are limited to situations where attention is divided at input or where the material must be manipulated during storage. Experiment II confirmed previous findings of minimal age losses in secondary memory word recognition. The results of this second study support the conclusion that there is poorer accessibility to stored verbal material with advancing age.     

Stimulus-form effectsin recognition memory

In two experiments, recognition memory was tested using memorized lists of items containing from 2 to 32 nominal concepts. Stimulus form was manipulated by using the names of the items on word trials and outline drawings of the items on picture trials. In terms of an information processing stage model of recognition memory, stimulus form affected only an identification or encoding stage of processing. Subsequent memory-search, decision, and response processes were largely the same for all stimuli once the words or pictures were encoded. The results are consistent with the hypothesized role of stimulus form in processes underlying long-term recognition. However, our results are inconsistent with those of a number of studies involving stimulus-form effects in short-term recognition memory.     

Measuring recognition memory.

Recent years have seen an expanded interest in recognition memory tasks. This resurgence of interest has also renewed concerns with measurement problems. Comparing 4 models of recognition memory, Snodgrass and Corwin (1988) found that measures of bias from the distribution-free (nonparametric) model were inadequate. However, their analysis was based on bias measures that can be shown a priori to be nonindependent of discrimination. This article traces the history of the nonparametric model and develops a better measure of bias. The consequence of developing this better measure is that the nonparametric model deserves serious consideration.     

Articulation effects in melody recognition memory

Various surface features—timbre, tempo, and pitch—influence melody recognition memory, but articulation format effects, if any, remain unknown. For the first time, these effects were examined. In Experiment 1, melodies that remained in the same, or appeared in a different but similar, articulation format from study to test were recognized better than were melodies that were presented in a distinct format at test. A similar articulation format adequately induced matching processes to enhance recognition. Experiment 2 revealed that melodies rated as perceptually dissimilar on the basis of the location of the articulation mismatch did not impair recognition performance, suggesting an important boundary condition for articulation format effects on memory recognition—the matching of the memory trace and recognition probe may depend more on the overall proportion, rather than the temporal location, of the mismatch. The present findings are discussed in terms of a global matching advantage hypothesis.     

Response latencies in short-term memory

This paper deals with the problem of the interpretation of response latencies in short-term memory. A paired-associate study using a probe technique was conducted with the main experimental variation the length of the recall interval (1, 2, or 4 sec.). While shortening the interval had a statistically significant effect on recall probability the interaction between recall interval and probe position was negligible. While traditionally response latency is considered a measure of associative strength, such an interpretation seems inappropriate here. As an alternative, latencies may reflect more criterion values than sensitivity as these measures are interpreted in signal-detection theory.     

Feature frequency effects in recognition memory

Rare words are usually better recognized than common words, a finding in recognition memory known as the word-frequency effect. Some theories predict the word-frequency effect because they assume that rare words consist of more distinctive features than do common words (e.g., Shiffrin & Steyvers's, 1997, REM theory). In this study, recognition memory was tested for words that vary in the commonness of their orthographic features, and we found that recognition was best for words made up of primarily rare letters. In addition, a mirror effect was observed: Words with rare letters had a higher hit rate and a lower false-alarm rate than did words with common letters. We also found that normative word frequency affects recognition independently of letter frequency. Therefore, the distinctiveness of a word's orthographic features is one, but not the only, factor necessary to explain the word-frequency effect.     

Strength-based criterion shifts in recognition memory

In manipulations of stimulus strength between lists, a more lenient signal detection criterion is more frequently applied to a weak than to a strong stimulus class. However, with randomly intermixed weak and strong test probes, such acriterion shift often does not result. A procedure that has yieldeddelay-based within-list criterion shifts was applied to strength manipulations in recognition memory for categorized word lists. When participants made semantic ratings about each stimulus word, strength-based criterion shifts emerged regardless of whether words from pairs of categories were studied in separate blocks (Experiment 1) or in intermixed blocks (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the criterion shift persisted under the semantic-rating study task, but not under rote memorization. These findings suggest that continually adjusting the recognition decision criterion is cognitively feasible. They provide a technique for manipulating the criterion shift, and they identify competing theoretical accounts of these effects.     

Strategic processes in false recognition memory

In two experiments, the response signal technique (Reed, 1973) was combined with the DRM paradigm (e.g., McDermott & Roediger, 1998) to investigate the time course of false recognition memory— in particular, how this effect varies along the time course of generating a recognition judgment. Across the experiments, in addition to standard instructions, there were forewarning instructions encouraging the participants to avoid this effect, as well as inclusion instructions intended to enhance this tendency. It was found that the false memory effect was at its strongest at earlier response signals, diminishing when more time was given to make a recognition judgment. The forewarning instructions led to a more conservative overall response bias, rather than to a reduction of the effect. However, the participants were able to exaggerate this effect in the inclusion condition. The results are discussed in terms of the role of strategic processing in recognition memory. Part of this research was presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Orlando, in November 2001. It was supported by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom.