How many response options? A study of remember–know testing procedures

Abstract

The remember–know procedure can be conducted in one or two steps. The one-step procedure does not include a recognition response (old–new) prior to the remember–know response. It is observed consistently that the one-step procedure leads to a more liberal placement of the response criterion, but it is unclear whether recognition accuracy is affected by the number of procedural steps. However, previous studies used bias-dependent measures of accuracy ( A′ and d′). We manipulated the number of steps and confirmed the finding that the response criterion is more liberal with the one-step procedure. More importantly, we employed a signal detection theory bias-free accuracy measure ( d a ) to show that varying the number of steps does not affect recognition accuracy, and we demonstrated that this pattern of results does not change when the dual process signal detection model ( Yonelinas, 1997) is applied.