Familiarity and recollection in item and associative recognition

Recognition memory for item information (single words) and associative information (word pairs) was tested immediately and after retention intervals of 30 min and 1 day (Experiment 1) and 2 days and 7 days (Experiment 2) using Tulving's (1985) remember/know response procedure. Associative recognition decisions were accompanied by more "remember" responses and less "know" responses than item recognition decisions. Overall recognition performance and the proportion of remember responses declined at similar rates for item and associative information. The pattern of results for item recognition was consistent with Donaldson's (1996) single-factor signal detection model of remember/know responses, as comparisons based on A' between overall item recognition and remember item recognition showed no significant differences. For associative recognition, however, A' for remember responses was reliably greater than for overall recognition. The results show that recollection plays a significant role in associative recognition.     

The revelation effect for item and associative recognition: Familiarity versus recollection

The revelation effect occurs when items on a recognition test are more likely to be judged as being old if they are preceded by a cognitive task that involves the processing of similar types of stimuli. This effect was examined for item (single-word) and associative (word-pair) recognition. We found, in Experiments 1 and 2, a revelation effect for item, but not for associative recognition under normal study conditions. A revelation effect for both item and associative recognition was observed in Experiments 3 and 4 when study time was extremely brief, thus limiting the encoding of information that would support recall or recollection. In Experiment 5, we demonstrated that the revelation effect for item recognition is eliminated when item recognition decisions are made in the context of a study item. The results show that the revelation task influenced recognition decisions based on familiarity, but not decisions that involved recall or recollection.     

Illusory recollection and dual-process models of recognition memory

Higham and Vokey (2000, Exps.1 & 3)demonstrated that a slight increase in the display duration of a briefly presented word prior to displaying it in the clear for a recognition response increased the bias to respond “old”. In the current research, three experiments investigated the phenomenology associated with this illusion of memory using the standard remember-know procedure and a new, independent-scales methodology. Contrary to expectations based on the fluency heuristic, which predicts effects of display duration on subjective familiarity only, the results indicated that the illusion was reported as both familiarity and recollection. Furthermore, manipulations of prime duration induced reports of false recollection in all experiments. The results—in particular, the implications of illusory recollection—are discussed in terms of dual-process, fuzzy-trace, two-criteria signal detection models and attribution models of recognition memory.     

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.     

Familiarity and word recognition

Word recognition was examined for physics and non-physics students after a single visual presentation of a series of sixty words. Physics words likely to be familiar only to physics subjects were used to vary the prior familiarity of the two groups with the inspection material and the ratio of physics to common words (salience) was varied for each of the three inspection series. Common words, which were expected to have greater salience than physics words in one of the inspection series, were not found to be recognized better than the control pairings of physics words by either group of subjects. The absence of differences between physics and non-physics students in the number of inspection list words (positive instances) correctly identified supports the view that prior familiarity is not a critical variable when all inspection items are presented in a recognition test. Physics students made fewer errors than non-physics students in identifying both physics and common words in the the recognition test which were not in an inspection series (negative instances). It is suggested that the correct identification of negative instances involves a scanning of a subject's “internal store” of previously experienced inspection items and that this is more efficient when the meaning of all the items in this “store” is known.     

Conjoint recognition and phantom recollection

A new methodology for measuring illusory conscious experience of the "presentation" of unstudied material (phantom recollection) is evaluated that extracts measurements directly from recognition responses, rather than indirectly from introspective reports. Application of this methodology in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Experiments 1 and 2) and in a more conventional paradigm (Experiment 3) showed that 2 processes (phantom recollection and familiarity) contribute to false recognition of semantically related distractors. Phantom recollection was the larger contributor to false recognition of critical distractors in the DRM paradigm, but surprisingly, it was also the larger contributor to false recognition of other types of distractors. Variability in false recognition was tied to variability in phantom recollection. Experimental control of phantom recollection was achieved with manipulations that were motivated by fuzzy-trace theory's hypothesis that the phenomenon is gist-based.     

Remembering parts and wholes: Configural processing in face recollection

In two experiments, we examined the role of configural processing on states of awareness in face recognition. Configural processing was manipulated by presenting upright and inverted faces during study and test. After studying facial photographs of humans (Experiment 1) and horses (Experiment 2), participants provided a remember/know judgement for each recognised test face. In both experiments, disrupted configural processing had selective effects on states of awareness, so that inversion reduced remember, but not know, responses. Experiment 2 revealed disproportionate inversion effects in that the difference in remember responses between upright and inverted items was significant for human faces but not horses. These findings suggest that configural processing facilitates explicit recollection by providing a distinctive combination of nonsalient event attributes.     

Familiarity supports associative recognition memory for face stimuli that can be unitised: Evidence from receiver operating characteristics

According to dual-process models, associative recognition memory mainly relies on recollection without benefiting from familiarity. This study investigates the circumstances under which familiarity may support associative recognition judgements by comparing recognition memory for arbitrarily paired items (i.e., pairs of face stimuli depicting two different persons; interitem associations) with recognition memory for pairs of items that are highly overlapping and can be unitised into a coherent whole (i.e., pairs of physically different but very similar face stimuli depicting the same person; intraitem associations). Estimates of familiarity and recollection were derived from receiver operating characteristics. Consistent with the hypothesis that familiarity is able to support associative recognition memory, but only when the to-be-associated stimuli can be unitised, results from two experiments revealed higher familiarity estimates for intra- compared to interitem associations. By contrast, recollection for recombined pairs was higher for inter- compared to intraitem associations. We propose a hypothetical model on how intraitem associations may benefit from familiarity.     

Remembering changes: repetition effects in face recollection.

Two experiments examined effects of repetition and change on states of awareness in face recognition. Participants studied repeatedly presented photographs of faces, with the second presentation following either immediately after the first presentation (massed repetition) or following six intervening items (spaced repetition). To manipulate perceptual change, each repeated face was either identical or a mirror image of the first presentation. Subsequently, when recognising a face, participants indicated whether they consciously recollected its prior occurrence ("remembering") or recognised it on the basis of familiarity ("knowing"). Changes in appearance between repeated faces enhanced remember, but not know, responses, and these effects were accentuated for spaced, rather than massed, repetition. These findings suggest that distinctiveness of encoding supports the phenomenological experience of conscious remembering.     

Slow wave sleep and recollection in recognition memory

Recognition memory performance reflects two distinct memory processes: a conscious process of recollection, which allows remembering specific details of a previous event, and familiarity, which emerges in the absence of any conscious information about the context in which the event occurred. Slow wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep are differentially involved in the consolidation of different types of memory. The study assessed the effects of SWS and REM sleep on recollection, by means of the "remember"/"know" paradigm. Subjects studied three blocks of 12 words before a 3-h retention interval filled with SWS, REM sleep or wakefulness, placed between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Afterwards, recognition and recollection were tested. Recollection was higher after a retention interval rich in SWS than after a retention interval rich in REM sleep or filled with wakefulness. The results suggest that SWS facilitates the process of recollection in recognition memory.     

Familiarity and recognition of faces in old age

Elderly persons exceed young adults in false recognitions of new faces. One account claims there are age-related deficits in memory for context of encounter with faces. Because of these deficits, elderly persons frequently recognize faces on the basis of perceived familiarity (i.e., resemblance to face representations in memory), which is high for some new faces. To test this context-recollection hypothesis, we had young adult and elderly subjects judge whether faces: (1) had been seen previously in a test (though no face was repeated), and (2) were subjectively familiar (though no face was famous). The elderly exceeded the young subjects in seen-before judgements (false recognitions), and only the elderly showed a positive correlation between false recognitions and subjective familiarity. In Experiment 2, this finding was extended from false recognitions to correct recognitions, supporting the view that elderly persons, compared to young adults, rely more on resemblance in recognizing faces.     

Sleep enhances explicit recollection in recognition memory

Recognition memory is considered to be supported by two different memory processes, i.e., the explicit recollection of information about a previous event and an implicit process of recognition based on an acontextual sense of familiarity. Both types of memory supposedly rely on distinct memory systems. Sleep is known to enhance the consolidation of memories, with the different sleep stages affecting different types of memory. In the present study, we used the process-dissociation procedure to compare the effects of sleep on estimates of explicit (recollection) and implicit (familiarity) memory formation on a word-list discrimination task. Subjects studied two lists of words before a 3-h retention interval of sleep or wakefulness, and recognition was tested afterward. The retention intervals were positioned either in the early night when sleep is dominated by slow-wave sleep (SWS), or in the late night, when sleep is dominated by REM sleep. Sleep enhanced explicit recognition memory, as compared with wakefulness (P < 0.05), whereas familiarity was not affected by sleep. Moreover, explicit recognition was particularly enhanced after sleep in the early-night retention interval, and especially when the words were presented with the same contextual features as during learning, i.e., in the same font (P < 0.05). The data indicate that in a task that allows separating the contribution of explicit and implicit memory, sleep particularly supports explicit memory formation. The mechanism of this effect appears to be linked to SWS.     

Novelty effects on recollection and familiarity in recognition memory

Recognition memory is better for novel or distinctive items than for non-novel items. However, it is not known whether these effects reflect changes in recollection or in familiarity-based recognition judgments. Some previous results have indicated that recollection should be more sensitive to novelty than to familiarity, whereas other results have suggested the opposite. We used avon Restorff paradigm in which a small proportion of studied items were made novel by presenting them in a color different from that of the majority of the study items. Memory was tested using a remember-know procedure. Across two experiments, stimulus novelty was found to benefit both recollection and familiarity. The effects on familiarity were observed under intentional and incidental encoding conditions, whereas the effects on recollection were significantly reduced, and no longer significant, under incidental as compared with intentional encoding conditions. Thus, both processes benefit from stimulus novelty, but the extent to which recollection benefits from novelty depends on the encoding condition.     

Environmental context and recognition: the role of recollection and familiarity

Evidence for effects of changed environmental context on recognition has been equivocal. Using 3 experiments, the author investigated the role of environmental context from a dual-processing approach. Experiment 1 showed that testing word recognition in a novel context led to a reliable decrement but only for recognition accompanied by conscious recollection, with familiarity-based recognition judgments being unaffected. This was replicated in Experiment 2 using stimuli that were novel to the participants (nonwords). Experiment 3 showed that the decrement in recollection also occurred when the changed-context condition involved presenting items in a different but familiar context. The results suggest that effects of environmental context will only be found when recognition is accompanied by conscious recollection and that this effect is due to a specific item-context association.     

Context effects in recognition memory: the role of familiarity and recollection

A variant of the process dissociation procedure was coupled with a manipulation of response signal lag to assess whether manipulations of context affect one or both of the familiarity and search processes described by the dual process model of recognition. Participants studied a list of word pairs (context+target) followed by a recognition test with target words presented in the same or different context, and in the same or different form as study (singular/plural). Participants were asked to recognize any target word regardless of changes to form (inclusion), or to only recognise words that were presented in the same form (exclusion). The standard context reinstatement effect was evident even at the short response lags. Analyses of the estimates of the contributions of familiarity and search processes suggest that the context effect demonstrated here can be attributed in part to the influence of familiarity on recognition, whereas the effect on recollection was less clear.     

Variations in recollection: the effects of complexity on source recognition

Whether recollection is a threshold or signal detection process is highly controversial, and the controversy has centered in part on the shape of receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) and z-transformed ROCs (zROCs). U-shaped zROCs observed in tests thought to rely heavily on recollection, such as source memory tests, have provided evidence in favor of the threshold assumption, but zROCs are not always as U-shaped as threshold theory predicts. Source zROCs have been shown to become more linear when the contribution of familiarity to source discriminations is increased, and this may account for the existing results. However, another way in which source zROCs may become more linear is if the recollection threshold begins to break down and recollection becomes more graded and Gaussian. We tested the "graded recollection" account in the current study. We found that increasing stimulus complexity (i.e., changing from single words to sentences) or increasing source complexity (i.e., changing the sources from audio to videos of speakers) resulted in flatter source zROCs. In addition, conditions expected to reduce recollection (i.e., divided attention and amnesia) had comparable effects on source memory in simple and complex conditions, suggesting that differences between simple and complex conditions were due to differences in the nature of recollection, rather than differences in the utility of familiarity. The results suggest that under conditions of high complexity, recollection can appear more graded, and it can produce curved ROCs. The results have implications for measurement models and for current theories of recognition memory.     

熟悉面孔与陌生面孔识别的差异

摘 要：面孔识别包括熟悉面孔识别和陌生面孔识别,两者之间的差异已经得到了多方面的证明。神经生理学的研究发现,识别陌生面孔和熟悉面孔所激活的脑区存在差异,与识别陌生面孔相比,识别熟悉面孔的脑区活动范围更大,包括双侧前额叶、单侧颞叶、海马回、杏仁核、后扣带回和右下额叶。并且也存在脑电的差异,比如 N400和P600的差异。对陌生面孔和熟悉面孔识别具有相同影响的因素有：遮挡、倒置等;具有不同影响的因素有：视角、表情、内外部特征等。文章也探讨了陌生面孔变成熟悉面孔的过程,以及在这一过程中起主要作用的编码形式等。