Separating bias and sensitivity in judgments of associative memory

Ratings of the degree of association between words are linearly related to normed associative strengths, but the intercept is high, and the slope is shallow (the judgments of associative memory JAM] function). Two experiments included manipulations intended to decrease the intercept and increase the slope. Discrimination training on many pairs of words and constraining ratings to sum to a constant both reduced the intercept but failed to change the slope. The intercept of the JAM function appears to contain a bias component that can be manipulated independently of the slope, which reflects sensitivity to associative strengths.