Familiarity and recollection in fictitious face recognition: implications for recognition models

Using the paradigm, participants were engaged in a fictitious face recognition experiment in which three between-subject conditions were manipulated by either adding or not adding wrinkles on the faces between the study and the recognition tasks (no change, single change, double change). Our hypothesis was that this procedure would maximize judgments based on familiarity, thus determining whether data provided better fit to the models based on the signal detection theory or to predictions of dual models. In global terms, our results support the signal detection model predictions, although we discuss whether these models better fit tasks based on familiarity or tasks based on recollection.     

熟悉性对被试操作效应的作用:来自无线索回忆再认的证据

在动作事件的再认记忆中,被试操作后的记忆成绩优于单纯的词语记忆(SPT效应)。人们认为操作促进了回想加工,而熟悉性是否对SPT效应起作用仍然存在分歧。研究采用无线索回忆再认范式,考察了信息提取失败时熟悉性对SPT效应的作用。结果显示:(1)SPT和VT两种编码都引发了稳定的无线索回忆再认效应(RWCR效应)。(2)与VT编码相比,SPT编码引发更强的熟悉性加工,表现出无线索回忆再认的记忆优势。上述结果表明,即使无法正确提取细节信息,在SPT编码中被试凭借熟悉性辨认的能力仍然高于VT编码。该结果从信息提取失败的视角为熟悉性对SPT效应的作用提供了更为直接的证据。     

The impact of aging on associative memory for preexisting unitized associations

Aging is accompanied by a decline in associative memory that can, however, be attenuated when associations are unitized at encoding, that is, when they form an integrated entity. Unitization is thought to promote familiarity-based recognition memory, which is preserved in aging. We examined whether preexperimentally unitized associations (compound words (CWs)) do indeed reduce age differences in memory, and whether preexperimental unitization promotes familiarity. In Experiment 1, we assessed the memory of 20 young and 20 older participants for compound versus unrelated word pairs using a yes/no recognition test with Remember/Know/Guess judgments. In Experiment 2, we tested 20 young and 20 older participants using the same procedure, except for the use of a two-alternative forced-choice recognition paradigm, which is thought to enhance the contribution of familiarity. The results of both experiments corroborated the greater contribution of familiarity to recognition of unitized associations. In Experiment 1, however, the use of CWs did not attenuate the age-related associative decline. We suggest that preexisting knowledge associated with recombined compounds induced high absolute familiarity and illusory recollection, leading to high false-recognition rates for the older adults. By contrast, the two groups performed similarly across both conditions in Experiment 2. Thus, the forced-choice procedure facilitates the use of familiarity in such a way that it improves older adults’ associative memory to the level of young participants. These results suggest that the modulation of associative memory in aging by preexisting unitization varies according to methodological parameters, such as the nature of the lures and the test format.     

Recognition memory for faces: When familiarity supports associative recognition judgments

Recognition memory for single items can be dissociated from recognition memory for the associations between items. For example, recognition tests for single words produce curvilinear receiver operating characteristics (ROCs), but associative recognition tests for word pairs produce linear ROCs. These dissociations are consistent with dual-process theories of recognition and suggest that associative recognition relies on recollection but that item recognition relies on a combination of recollection and assessments of familiarity. In the present study, we examined associative recognition ROCs for facial stimuli by manipulating the central and external features, in order to determine whether linear ROCs would be observed for stimuli other than arbitrary word pairs. When the faces were presented upright, familiarity estimates were significantly above zero, and the associative ROCs were curvilinear, suggesting that familiarity contributed to associative judgments. However, presenting the faces upside down effectively eliminated the contribution of familiarity to associative recognition, and the ROCs were linear. The results suggest that familiarity can support associative recognition judgments, if the associated components are encoded as a coherent gestalt, as in upright faces.     

Test context affects recollection and familiarity ratings: implications for measuring recognition experiences

The binary remember/know task requires participants to dichotomize their subjective recognition experiences into those with recollection and those only with familiarity. Many variables have produced dissociative effects on remember/know judgments. In contrast, having participants make independent recollection/familiarity ratings has consistently produced parallel effects, suggesting the dissociations may be artifacts of using binary judgments. Bodner and Lindsay (2003) reported a test-list context effect with binary judgments: Increased remembering but decreased knowing for a set of critical items tested with a set of less-memorable (vs. more-memorable) items. Here we report a parallel effect of test-list context on recollection and familiarity ratings, induced by a shift in response bias. We argue that independent ratings are preferable to binary judgments because they allow participants to directly report the co-occurrence of recollection and familiarity for each item. Implications for the measurement of self-reported recognition experiences, and for accounts of recognition memory, are discussed.     

Fluency and response speed in recognition judgments

Previous research has suggested that perceptual fluency can contribute to recognition judgments. In this study, we examined whether fluency in recognition is based upon the speed of preceding operations, as suggested by studies of perceptual fluency. Subjects studied items in both lexical decision and naming tasks, and were then tested on two blocks of lexical decision trials with probe recognition trials. Jacoby’s process dissociation procedure was used, and results from this procedure suggested that recognition judgments in the task were based largely upon familiarity. However, the estimated discriminability available from response time distributions was significantly less than the observed recognition discriminability. Simulated memory operating characteristics confirmed this underdetermination of recognition by response times. The results demonstrate, contrary to previous suggestions, that fluency in recognition is not based upon speed.     

Familiarity from orthographic information: Extensions of the recognition without identification effect

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of letter location information in recognition memory judgments. The experiments used the recognition without identification paradigm (Peynircioglu, 1990), in which participants first attempt to identify the test item and then make a recognition decision as to whether or not the item was studied. In these studies, items that are not identified but that correspond to items that were presented are typically still rated as more likely to have been studied than those that were not presented. The present experiments demonstrated this finding with a variant of the conjunction lure paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were tested with word fragments that were made from the letters of two words. When the letters were from studied items, fragments were rated higher than when the test items were derived from two unstudied items, or one studied item and one unstudied item, suggesting that recognition without identification is prone to the same types of errors as recognition with identification. Results are discussed in terms of familiarity effects in recognition memory.     

Intact conceptual priming in the absence of declarative memory

Priming is an unconscious (nondeclarative) form of memory whereby identification or production of an item is improved by an earlier encounter. It has been proposed that declarative memory and priming might be related-for example, that conceptual priming results in more fluent processing, thereby providing a basis for familiarity judgments. In two experiments, we assessed conceptual priming and recognition memory across a 5-min interval in 5 memory-impaired patients. All patients exhibited fully intact priming in tests of both free association (study tent; at test, provide an association to canvas) and category verification (study lemon; at test, decide: Is lemon a type of fruit?). Yet the 2 most severely amnesic patients performed at chance on matched tests of recognition memory. These findings count against the notion that conceptual priming provides feelings of familiarity that can support accurate recognition judgments. We suggest that priming is inaccessible to conscious awareness and does not influence declarative memory.     

On the contribution of perceptual fluency and priming to recognition memory

Repetition priming has been shown to be independent of recognition memory. Thus, the severely amnesic patient E.P. has demonstrated intact stem completion priming and perceptual identification priming, despite at-chance performance on recognition memory tasks. It has also been shown that perceptual fluency can influence feelings of familiarity, in the sense that items perceived more quickly tend to be identified as familiar. If studied items are identified more fluently, due to perceptual priming, and fluency leads to familiarity, why do severely amnesic patients perform no better than chance on recognition memory tasks? One possibility is that severely amnesic patients do not exhibit normal fluency. Another possibility is that fluency is not a sufficiently strong cue for familiarity. In two experiments, 2 severely amnesic patients, 3 moderately amnesic patients, and 8 controls saw words slowly clearing from a mask. The participants identified each word as quickly as possible and then made a recognition (old/new) judgment. All the participants exhibited fluency, in that old responses were associated with shorter identification times than new responses were. In addition, for the severely amnesic patients, priming was intact, and recognition memory performance was at chance. We next calculated how much priming and fluency should elevate the probability of accurate recognition. The tendency to identify studied words rapidly (.6) and the tendency to label these rapidly identified words old (.6) would result in 36% of the studied words being labeled old. Other studied words were identified slowly (.4) but were still labeled old (.4), resulting in an additional 16% of studied words labeled old. Thus, the presence of fluency increases the probability of accurate recognition judgments to only 52% (chance = 50%). This finding explains why amnesic patients can exhibit both priming and fluency yet still perform at chance on recognition tests.     

Recognition memory for source and occurrence: The importance of recollection

Previous recognition memory studies indicate that when both recollection and familiarity are expected to contribute to recognition performance (e.g., discriminating studied items from nonstudied items) the dual-process and the unequal-variance signal detection models provide comparable accounts of performance. When familiarity is not expected to be useful (e.g., when items from two equally familiar sources are discriminated between), the dual-process model provides a significantly better account of performance. In the present study, source recognition was tested under conditions in which familiarity could have been used to perform a list-discrimination task; participants were required to discriminate between strong studied items, weak studied items, and new items. The dual-process model provided a better account of performance than did the unequal-variance model. Moreover, the results indicated that the unequal-variance assumption in a single-process signal detection model was not a valid substitution for recollection and that recollection was used to make recognition judgments even when assessments of familiarity were useful.     

Effects of modality on subjective frequency estimates and processing of spoken and printed words

Previous research (Garber & Pisoni, 1991; Pisoni & Garber, 1990) has demonstrated that subjective familiarity judgments for words are not differentially affected by the modality (visual or auditory) in which the words are presented, suggesting that participants base their judgments on fairly abstract, modality-independent representations in memory. However, in a recent large-scale study in Japanese (Amano, Kondo, & Kakehi, 1995), marked modality effects on familiarity ratings were observed. The present research further examined possible modality differences in subjective ratings and their implications for word recognition. Specially selected words were presented to participants for frequency judgments. In particular, participants were asked how frequently they read, wrote, heard, or said a given spoken or printed word. These ratings were then regressed against processing times in auditory and visual lexical decision and naming tasks. Our results suggest modality dependence for some lexical representations.     

Recognition memory ROCs for item and associative information: The contribution of recollection and familiarity

Receiver-operating characteristics (ROCs) were examined in three recognition memory experiments. ROCs for item information (i.e., was this word presented?) were found to be curvilinear. However, ROCs for associative information (i.e., were these two words presented together?) were found to be linear. The results are in agreement with the predictions of a dual-process model that assumes that recognition judgments are -based on familiarity and recollection. Familiarity reflects the assessment of a continuous strength dimension and is well described as a signal detection process, whereas recollection reflects the retrieval of qualitative information about the study episode and behaves like a discrete threshold process. The results showed that memory judgments about items relied on a combination of recollection and familiarity, but that judgments about associations relied primarily on recollection. Further examination of the associative ROCs suggested that subjects were able to recollect that old pairs of items were in the study list, and, under some conditions, that new pairs were not in the study list.     

False recency and false fame of faces in young adulthood and old age

Studies of age differences in face recognition have shown age-related increases in false-alarm errors: elderly persons exceed young adults in judging new faces to be old. To distinguish among theoretical accounts of this finding, we compared young and elderly subjects in two recognition tasks: (1) that of judging whether faces were recent or nonrecent, and (2) that of judging whether faces were famous or nonfamous. The major independent variable was prior presentation of faces-including nonrecent and nonfamous foils-1 week before the test. False recent judgments in response to nonrecent faces and false famous judgments in response to nonfamous faces were higher among the elderly. Moreover, these age-related differences in false-alarm rates were larger for faces viewed 1 week previously than for entirely new faces. The findings suggest that, compared to young adults, older individuals rely relatively more on perceived familiarity, and relatively less on recollection of context, in making recognition decisions.     

Familiarity influences judgments of sex: the case of voice recognition

Two experiments are reported in which subjects made judgments about the sex or the familiarity of a voice. In experiment 1, subjects were fans of the BBC-radio soap opera, The Archers, and familiar voice clips were taken from this programme. Subjects showed a large reduction in response times when making sex judgments to familiar voices, despite the fact that sex judgments are generally much faster than familiarity judgments. In experiment 2, the same familiar clips were played to subjects unfamiliar with the soap opera, and no difference was observed in times to make sex judgments to Archers or non-Archers voices. We conclude that, unlike the case of face recognition, sex and identity processing of voices are not independent. The findings constrain models of person recognition across multiple modalities.     

The use of cue familiarity during retrieval failure is affected by past versus future orientation

Cue familiarity that is brought on by cue resemblance to memory representations is useful for judging the likelihood of a past occurrence with an item that fails to actually be retrieved from memory. The present study examined the extent to which this type of resemblance-based cue familiarity is used in future-oriented judgments made during retrieval failure. Cue familiarity was manipulated using a previously-established method of creating differing degrees of feature overlap between the cue and studied items in memory, and the primary interest was in how these varying degrees of cue familiarity would influence future-oriented feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments given in instances of cued recall failure. The present results suggest that participants do use increases in resemblance-based cue familiarity to infer an increased likelihood of future recognition of an unretrieved target, but not to the extent that they use it to infer an increased likelihood of past experience with an unretrieved target. During retrieval failure, the increase in future-oriented FOK judgments with increasing cue familiarity was significantly less than the increase in past-oriented recognition judgments with increasing cue familiarity.     

Identifying the Basis for the Word Frequency Effect in Recognition Memory

Abstract

Recent theories of recognition memory have identified two bases on which recognition-memory judgments may be made: recollection, which involves retrieval of contextual information from an earlier episode of stimulus presentation; and familiarity, which is distinguished by a general sense of familiarity in the absence of recollection. Four experiments were conducted to test whether the word frequency effect (WFE) in recognition memory (superior performance with low- in comparison with high-frequency targets) results from recollection-based processes, familiarity-based processes, or both. In two of the experiments, superior memory for aspects of the study context was found for low-frequency in comparison with high-frequency words, suggesting frequency-related differences in recollection. The other two experiments used Jacoby's (1991) inclusion/exclusion paradigm to provide estimates of the contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition. In both experiments the data suggested that the WFE is primarily a recollection-based phenomenon. These findings suggest that the recognition memory WFE for old items results primarily from the effects of word frequency on recollection. The implications of these findings for theories of recognition memory are discussed.     

The word-frequency paradox for recall/recognition occurs for pictures

A yes-no recognition task and two recall tasks were conducted using pictures of high and low familiarity ratings. Picture familiarity had analogous effects to word frequency, and replicated the word-frequency paradox in recall and recognition. Low-familiarity pictures were more recognizable than high-familiarity pictures, pure lists of high-familiarity pictures were more recallable than pure lists of low-familiarity pictures, and there was no effect of familiarity for mixed lists. These results are consistent with the predictions of the Search of Associative Memory (SAM) model.     

Enactment supports unitisation of action components and enhances the contribution of familiarity to associative recognition

Memory for actions is usually better following subject-performed tasks (SPT) than verbal tasks (VT). We hypothesised that enactment unitises the components of actions such that familiarity can support associative recognition following SPT. To examine this hypothesis, participants studied verb–object pairs in a SPT or VT condition. During testing, they discriminated between intact, recombined and new items and made Remember/Know judgments; additionally, their EEGs were recorded. Associative recognition was better following SPT than VT. Early frontal event-related potentials (ERPs) were graded according to the item status following SPT, but no such effects were found after VT. Similarly, the late parietal ERPs were graded following SPT, whereas these effects were smaller and did not differ between intact and recombined items following VT. We conclude that enactment unitised the action and object so that familiarity could contribute to associative recognition and that recollection became sensitive to the amount of the matching associative information.     

Response speeding mediates the contributions of cue familiarity and target retrievability to metamnemonic judgments

Metamnemonic judgments are influenced by the retrievability of the target memory in question, but also by the familiarity of the cue used to elicit such judgments. However, there have been few suggestions as to what factors mediate the influence of these different sources of information on metamnemonic judgments. In this experiment, I examined the interactions between prediction time pressure and variables that promote either cue familiarity or target retrievability. The data reveal that target retrievability plays a larger role than does cue familiarity in fostering predictions of future recall made under unpressured conditions, but that cue familiarity influences predictions that are speeded. This pattern is interpreted by analogy with recognition memory: Mnemonic evidence based on familiarity is more impervious to the demands of time pressure than are the products of deliberative retrieval. Several explanations for this effect are suggested.     

Familiarity is related to conceptual implicit memory: An examination of individual differences

Explicit memory is thought to be distinct from implicit memory. However, growing evidence has indicated that explicit familiarity-based recognition memory judgments rely on the same process that supports conceptual implicit memory. We tested this hypothesis by examining individual differences using a paradigm wherein we measured both familiarity and conceptual implicit memory within the same participants. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we examined recognition memory confidence ROCs and remember/know responses, respectively, to estimate recollection and familiarity, and used a free association task to measure conceptual implicit memory. The results demonstrated that, across participants, familiarity, but not recollection, was significantly correlated with conceptual priming. In contrast, in Experiment 2, utilizing a similar paradigm, a comparison of recognition memory ROCs and explicit associative cued-recall performance indicated that cued recall was related to both recollection and familiarity. These results are consistent with models assuming that familiarity-based recognition and conceptual implicit memory rely on similar underlying processes.