Infrequent but adaptive outsourcing in recognition memory

Abstract

After a to-be-remembered event occurs, individuals may receive additional information that alters their memory for that event. When this external information is misleading, it can result in memory “contamination.” When this external information is accurate, individuals can benefit (e.g., seeing a hint at retrieval). Notably, it appears that even if this external information is only sometimes accurate, individuals can still benefit if they restrict use of that information to conditions where their own memory is particularly poor. This is known as low-confidence outsourcing. Existing work supporting this account has provided participants with unavoidable recognition cues that mark test items as “likely old” or “likely new”. However, this makes it difficult to see how individuals choose to use those cues. The present work gives participants the opportunity to seek out or avoid external cues, which allows for a higher resolution look at when and how individuals integrate external information into the recognition decision. In two single-item recognition studies we demonstrate that individuals improved recognition performance when they had the opportunity to seek out valid external cues. However, they only used those cues on about a quarter of trials where cues were available, and tended to use those cues most often when memory quality was poor. When individuals did acquire this information, they were heavily influenced by it. These results support accounts of low-confidence outsourcing.