Remember-know Judgments Research Articles

Face naming and recollection represent key memory deficits in developmental prosopagnosia

Previous studies have found that face perception deficits do not fully account for the severity of face recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia (DP). Researchers have begun identifying deficient memory mechanisms such as impaired face recollection, but these findings require replication, and further characterization of additional memory deficits is necessary. Our goals were to replicate prior findings of face recollection impairment in DP and extend these findings to assess different types of face associative memory. We had 69 DPs and 99 controls perform a face perception battery as well as three face memory tasks: 1) Old/New task with confidence ratings to calculate recollection and familiarity using ROC analysis, 2) Face/Scene task to examine remember-know judgments and contextual memory for faces, and 3) Face-Name/Occupation task to assess the ability to learn semantic associations with faces. Compared to controls, DPs showed poorer recollection and familiarity across both Old/New and Face/Scene tasks as well as reduced scene accuracy for correct faces. Of these differences, only Old/New recollection remained significant after controlling for group differences in face perception abilities. In the Face-Name/Occupation task, after controlling for face perception, DPs showed poorer recall of names than controls but performed similarly in recalling occupations. Finally, we found that DPs with major, mild, and no face perception deficits showed consistent impairments in Old/New recollection and face-naming, and larger perceptual deficits were associated with larger memory deficits. Together, these results provide several mechanistic insights into the nature of memory deficits in DPs and have diagnostic and treatment implications.

False Memory Facilitation Through Semantic Overlap.

This study investigated the effects of semantic overlap from multiple sources on false memories. Participants were presented with paired study lists comprising items highly associated with one nonstudied critical item. There were three types of list pairs: (1) the sharing condition, in which the words in both lists were classified into different semantic groups that converged on the same critical word (semantic overlap), (2) the repetition condition, in which the two lists comprised identical words, and (3) the single condition, in which the paired lists were attributed to different semantic groups that did not share a critical item. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with the paired study lists and responded to free recall tests and a recognition test including remember-know judgments. In Experiment 2, the participants responded to a recognition test, and the participants in Experiment 3 recalled the studied items. The results indicated that the false recall and false recognition rates in the sharing condition were higher than those in the repetition and single conditions. These results suggest that activation from multiple independent sources may have an accumulative additive effect. The findings are discussed in relation to the Activation-Monitoring theory.

Recognition, remember-know, and confidence judgments: no evidence of cross-contamination here!

ABSTRACT We report three experiments designed to reveal the mechanisms that underlie subjective experiences of recognition by examining effects of how those experiences are measured. Prior research has explored the potential influences of collecting metacognitive measures on memory performance. Building on this work, here we systematically evaluated whether cross-measure contamination occurs when remember-know (RK) and/or confidence (C) judgments are made after old/new recognition decisions. In Experiment 1, making either RK or C judgments did not significantly influence recognition relative to a standard no-judgment condition. In Experiment 2, making RK judgments in addition to C judgments did not significantly affect recognition or confidence. In Experiment 3, making C judgments in addition to RK judgments did not significantly affect recognition or patterns of RK responses. Cross-contamination was not apparent regardless of whether items were studied using a shallow or deep levels-of-processing task – a manipulation that yielded robust effects on recognition, RK judgments, and C. Our results indicate that under some conditions, participants can independently evaluate their recognition, subjective recognition experience, and confidence. Though contamination across measures of metamemory and memory is always possible, it may not be inevitable. This has implications for the mechanisms that underlie subjective experiences that accompany recognition judgments.

The Role of Item-Specific Information for the Retrieval Awareness of Performed Actions.

Research on action memory has been pursued for more than 30 years, but it is still unclear what drives the recollection process of performed actions. In this study, we used the remember/know paradigm and designed two experiments to examine the relation between item-specific processing and retrieval awareness of subject-performed tasks (SPT). The results showed that SPT allows remember responses in remember-know judgments more easily; that is, SPT can enhance the frequency of recalling re-collective experience. Item-specific processing can improve the memory performance and the proportion of remember judgments of verbal tasks (VT), but it does not improve the memory performance and proportion of remember judgments of SPT, indicating that SPT can enhance item-specific processing, which leads to more remember responses in judgment. The relation between item-specific processing and retrieval awareness of SPT is also discussed.

Neural correlates of memory encoding and recognition for own-race and other-race faces in an associative-memory task

The ability to recognize faces of family members, friends, and acquaintances plays an important role in our daily interactions. The other-race effect is the reduced ability to recognize other-race faces as compared to own-race faces. Previous studies showed different patterns of event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with recollection and familiarity during memory encoding (i.e., Dm) and recognition (i.e., parietal old/new effect) for own-race and other-race faces in a subjective-recollection task (remember-know judgments). The present study investigated the same neural correlates of the other-race effect in an associative-memory task, in which Caucasian and East Asian participants learned and recognized own-race and other-race faces along with background colors. Participants made more false alarms for other-race faces indicating lower memory performance. During the study phase, subsequently recognized other-race faces (with and without correct background information) elicited more positive mean amplitudes than own-race faces, suggesting increased neural activation during encoding of other-race faces. During the test phase, recollection-related old/new effects dissociated between own-race and other-race faces. Old/new effects were significant only for own-race but not for other-race faces, indicating that recognition only of own-race faces was supported by recollection and led to more detailed memory retrieval. Most of these results replicated previous studies that used a subjective-recollection task. Our study also showed that the increased demand on memory encoding during an associative-memory task led to Dm patterns that indicated similarly deep memory encoding for own-race and other-race faces.

Familiarity, but not recollection, supports the between-subject production effect in recognition memory.

Five experiments explored the basis of the between-subjects production effect in recognition memory as represented by differences in the recollection and familiarity of produced (read aloud) and nonproduced (read silently) words. Using remember-know judgments (Experiment 1b) and a dual-process signal-detection approach applied to confidence ratings (Experiments 2b and 3), we observed that production influences familiarity but not recollection when manipulated between-subjects. This is in contrast to within-subject designs, which reveal a clear effect of production on both recollection and familiarity (Experiments 1a and 2a). Our findings resolve contention concerning apparent design effects: Whereas the within-subject production effect is subserved by separable recollective- and familiarity-based components, the between-subjects production effect is subserved by the familiarity-based component alone. Our findings support a role for the relative distinctiveness of production as a means of guiding recognition judgments (at least when manipulated within-subjects), but we also propose that production influences the strength of produced items, explaining the persistence of the effect in between-subjects designs.

An overall decline both in recollection and familiarity in healthy aging.

In the area of recognition memory, the experimental data have been inconsistent about whether or not familiarity declines in healthy aging. A recent meta-analysis concluded that familiarity is impaired when estimated with the remember-know procedure, but not with the process-dissociation procedure. We present an associative recognition experiment with remember-know judgments that allow us to estimate both recollection and familiarity using both procedures in the same task and with the same participants (a sample of healthy older people and another sample of young people). Moreover, we performed a within-subjects manipulation of the type of materials (pairs of words or pairs of pictures), and the repetition or not of the pairs during the study phase. The results show that familiarity, estimated using both estimation procedures, declines significantly with age, although the effect size obtained with the process-dissociation procedure is significantly smaller than the one obtained with the remember-know procedure. Our results show that aging is associated with significant decreases both in recollection and, to a lesser extent, familiarity.

Does the Butcher-on-the-Bus Phenomenon Require a Dual-Process Explanation? A Signal Detection Analysis

The butcher-on-the-bus is a rhetorical device or hypothetical phenomenon that is often used to illustrate how recognition decisions can be based on different memory processes (Mandler, 1980). The phenomenon describes a scenario in which a person is recognized but the recognition is accompanied by a sense of familiarity or knowing characterized by an absence of contextual details such as the person’s identity. We report two recognition memory experiments that use signal detection analyses to determine whether this phenomenon is evidence for a recollection plus familiarity model of recognition or is better explained by a univariate signal detection model. We conclude that there is an interaction between confidence estimates and remember-know judgments which is not explained fully by either single-process signal detection or traditional dual-process models.

On the validity of remember–know judgments: Evidence from think aloud protocols

The use of remember-know judgments to assess subjective experience associated with memory retrieval, or as measures of recollection and familiarity processes, has been controversial. In the current study we had participants think aloud during study and provide verbal reports at test for remember-know and confidence (i.e., sure-probably) judgments. Results indicated that the vast majority of remember judgments for studied items were associated with recollection from study (87%), but this correspondence was less likely for high-confidence judgments (72%). Instead, high-confidence judgments were more likely than remember judgments to be associated with incorrect recollection and a lack of recollection. Know judgments were typically associated with a lack of recollection (62%), but still included recollection from the study context (33%). Thus, although remember judgments provided fairly accurate assessments of retrieval including contextual details, know judgments did not provide accurate assessments of retrieval lacking contextual details.

Impaired capacity for familiarity after hippocampal damage

Recognition memory is thought to consist of two components: recollection and familiarity. Whereas it is widely agreed that the hippocampus supports recollection (remembering the episode in which an item was learned), there is uncertainty about whether it also supports familiarity (simply knowing that an item was encountered but without remembering the learning episode). We tested a counterintuitive prediction that follows from the idea that the hippocampus selectively supports recollection. Patients with hippocampal lesions should have strong experiences of familiarity as often as controls do; however, unlike controls, these experiences should not be accompanied by recollection. Accordingly, with methods that allow participants to report whether they remember an item as encountered previously or whether they simply know it is familiar, patients should express strong familiarity (in the absence of recollection) more often than controls. We indexed strong familiarity and recollection for previously studied words by obtaining confidence ratings together with Remember-Know judgments. The result was that patients provided fewer high-confidence Know responses than controls rather than more. Furthermore, the number of Know responses made by patients was substantially less than was predicted if recollection were impaired. This was true regardless of whether the prediction was based on the assumption that recollection and familiarity are independent or dependent processes. These results suggest that hippocampal lesions impair both recollection and familiarity. Unlike many previous studies of these constructs, the prediction (and the result) is independent of any particular theoretical model, and it holds even if Remember-Know judgments are not process-pure indicators of recollection and familiarity.

Automatic processing influences free recall: converging evidence from the process dissociation procedure and remember-know judgments

Dual-process theories of retrieval suggest that controlled and automatic processing contribute to memory performance. Free recall tests are often considered pure measures of recollection, assessing only the controlled process. We report two experiments demonstrating that automatic processes also influence free recall. Experiment 1 used inclusion and exclusion tasks to estimate recollection and automaticity in free recall, adopting a new variant of the process dissociation procedure. Dividing attention during study selectively reduced the recollection estimate but did not affect the automatic component. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of Experiment 1, and subjects additionally reported remember-know-guess judgments during recall in the inclusion condition. In the latter task, dividing attention during study reduced remember judgments for studied items, but know responses were unaffected. Results from both methods indicated that free recall is partly driven by automatic processes. Thus, we conclude that retrieval in free recall tests is not driven solely by conscious recollection (or remembering) but also by automatic influences of the same sort believed to drive priming on implicit memory tests. Sometimes items come to mind without volition in free recall.

Positive and negative remember judgments and ROCs in the plurals paradigm: Evidence for alternative decision strategies

Using old-new ratings and remember-know judgments we explored the plurals paradigm, in which studied words must be distinguished from plurality-changed lures. The paradigm allowed us to investigate negative remembering--that is, the remembering of a plural-altered study item; capacity for this judgment was found to be poorer than or equivalent to the conventional positive remembering. A response-bias manipulation affected positive but not negative remembering. The ratings were used to construct ROC curves and test the prediction of the most common dual-process theory of recognition memory (Yonelinas, 2001) that the amount of recollection can be independently estimated from ROC curves and from remember judgments. By fitting the individual data with pure signal detection theory (SDT) models and dual-process models that combined SDT and high-threshold components (HTSDT), we identified two types of subjects. For those who were better described by HTSDT, the predicted convergence of remember-know and ROC measures was observed. For those who were better described by SDT, the ROC intercept could not predict the remember rate. The data are consistent with the idea that all subjects rely on the same representation but base their decisions on different partitions of a decision space.

Double dissociation of selective recollection and familiarity impairments following two different surgical treatments for temporal-lobe epilepsy

Research has firmly established that the integrity of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is critical for recognition memory. This ability is supported by recollection, which involves recovery of contextual details of a past stimulus encounter, and familiarity assessment, which leads to awareness of prior occurrence without such recovery. Dual-process models of MTL organization posit that recollection and familiarity are supported by the hippocampus and perirhinal cortex, respectively. Alternatively, it has been argued that both structures support these recognition processes similarly as part of a more integrated declarative memory system; from this perspective, reported selective recollection impairments with circumscribed hippocampal lesions may reflect differential sensitivity to overall memory strength, rather than a deficit in a distinct recognition process. Findings from past neuropsychological research remain inconsistent and controversial, in part due to biases in patient selection, variability in clinical etiology, and limited lesion documentation. Here, we administered a verbal recognition-memory task in combination with remember-know judgements to 10 individuals who had undergone left- or right-sided stereotactic amygdalo-hippocampotomy as a surgical treatment for intractable temporal-lobe epilepsy. Comparisons with healthy control participants revealed isolated impairments in recollection with preserved familiarity, regardless of hemispheric site of lesion. In addition, we show that this impairment can be observed at a comparable level of memory strength (i.e., overall recognition performance) as the selective familiarity impairment we previously described in N.B. – an individual who underwent a tailored surgical resection of the left anterior temporal lobe with hippocampal sparing for treatment of temporal-lobe epilepsy. By revealing a double dissociation concerning temporal-lobe mechanisms for recollection and familiarity, this evidence argues against a unitary, strength-based account of MTL organization.

The Role of Past in the Simulation of Autobiographical Future Episodes

Human beings' ability to envisage the future has been recently assumed to rely on the reconstructive nature of episodic memory (Schacter & Addis, 2007). In the present research, young adults mentally reexperienced and preexperienced temporally close and distant autobiographical episodes, and rated their phenomenal characteristics as well as their novelty. Additionally, they performed a delayed recognition task including remember-know judgments on new, old-remember, and old-imagine words. Results showed that past and future temporally close episodes included more phenomenal details than distant episodes, in line with earlier studies. However, future events were occasionally rated as already occurred in the past. Furthermore, in the recognition task, participants falsely attributed old-imagine words to remembered episodes. While partially in line with previous results, these findings call for a more subtle analysis in order to discriminate representations of past episodes from true future events simulations.

Do age-related differences in episodic feeling of knowing accuracy depend on the timing of the judgement?

The current study investigated whether there were age-related differences in episodic feeling-of-knowing (FOK) accuracy and whether accuracy was influenced by when the FOK judgements were made. Younger and older participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions that manipulated the timing of the FOK in relation to cued recall and associative recognition. Age-related differences in FOK accuracy were not reliable either when the FOK was immediate or when it was delayed. Moreover, FOK accuracy was above chance for both age groups. Remember/Know (RK) judgements correlated reliably with FOKs for unrecalled words for both age groups and did not vary by FOK timing. The invariance in FOK accuracy occurred despite robust age differences in associative cued recall and associative recognition, as well as age differences in recollection as measured by RK judgements. The findings are inconsistent with the argument that there is a general age deficit in episodic FOK accuracy. Possible reasons for discrepant findings in the literature are discussed.

Evaluating models of remember-know judgments: Complexity, mimicry, and discriminability

Remember-know judgments provide additional information in recognition memory tests, but the nature of this information and the attendant decision process are in dispute. Competing models have proposed that remember judgments reflect a sum of familiarity and recollective information (the one-dimensional model), are based on a difference between these strengths (STREAK), or are purely recollective (the dual-process model). A choice among these accounts is sometimes made by comparing the precision of their fits to data, but this strategy may be muddied by differences in model complexity: Some models that appear to provide good fits may simply be better able to mimic the data produced by other models. To evaluate this possibility, we simulated data with each of the models in each of three popular remember-know paradigms, then fit those data to each of the models. We found that the one-dimensional model is generally less complex than the others, but despite this handicap, it dominates the others as the best-fitting model. For both reasons, the one-dimensional model should be preferred. In addition, we found that some empirical paradigms are ill-suited for distinguishing among models. For example, data collected by soliciting remember/know/new judgments--that is, the trinary task--provide a particularly weak ground for distinguishing models. Additional tables and figures may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society's Archive of Norms, Stimuli, and Data, at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Analysis of RT distributions in the remember—know paradigm

Do remembering and knowing differ qualitatively (reflecting distinct underlying processes) or quantitatively (reflecting different levels of strength)? Broadly speaking, models of remember-know judgments based on these alternatives have been tested by examining the proportion of remember and know responses that are made across conditions or levels of confidence. Here, we consider reaction time (RT) data. We replicate Dewhurst and Conway's (1994) observation that old judgments followed by remember responses are faster, on average, than those followed by know decisions, but show that this effect is largely due to differing distributions of remember and know responses across confidence levels. In addition, fits of ex-Gaussian distributions of hit RTs followed by either remember or know judgments yield similar parameter values when confidence level is controlled. Thus, these RT data do not provide strong support for the idea that remembering and knowing depend on different processes.

Two dimensions are not better than one: STREAK and the univariate signal detection model of remember/know performance

We evaluated STREAK and the univariate signal detection model of Remember/Know (RK) judgments in terms of their ability to fit empirical data and produce psychologically meaningful parameter estimates. Participants studied pairs of words and completed item recognition tests with RK judgments as well as associative recognition tests. Fits to the RK data showed that the univariate model provided a better fit than STREAK for the majority of participants. Although associative recognition relies primarily on specific memory evidence for the association, both the global and specific memory strength estimates from STREAK strongly correlated with associative recognition performance, and the correlation was actually nominally stronger for global strength. Thus, STREAK did not fit the data as well as the univariate model and did not produce interpretable estimates of global and specific memory strength. The success of the univariate model suggests that RK judgments are based on a single conglomerate of all available memory evidence and do not reflect qualitatively different memory systems or processes.

Binding of multidimensional context information as a distinctive characteristic of remember judgments.

This research investigated the cognitive processes underlying remember-know judgments in terms of contextual binding in multidimensional source memory. Stochastic dependence between the retrieval of different context attributes, which formed the empirical criterion of binding, was observed for remembered items but not for known items. Experiment 1 showed that the qualitative difference in the stochastic relation holds even if quantitative source-memory performance is equated for items with remember and know judgments. Experiment 2 generalized the findings to context information from different modalities, and Experiment 3 ruled out a spurious stochastic dependence due to interindividual differences. Supporting recent dual-process models of remember-know judgments, the findings show that remember and know judgments differ with respect to binding processes that correspond to episodic recollection.

“Remembering” emotional words is based on response bias, not recollection

Recent studies have demonstrated that emotional stimuli result in a higher proportion of recognized items that are "remembered" (e.g., Kensinger & Corkin, 2003; Ochsner, 2000), leading to greater estimates of recollection by the dual-process model (Yonelinas, 1994). This result suggests that recognition judgments to emotional stimuli depend on a recollection process. We challenge this conclusion with receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve data from two experiments. In both experiments, subjects studied neutral and emotional words. During the recognition test, subjects made old-new confidence ratings as well as remember-know judgments. Four models of remember-know judgments were fit to individual subjects' data: two versions of a one-dimensional signal-detection-based model (Donaldson, 1996; Wixted & Stretch, 2004), the dual-process model (Yonelinas, 1994), and the two-dimensional signal-detection-based model known as STREAK (Rotello, Macmillan, & Reeder, 2004). Consistent with the literature, we found that emotion increases subjective reports of "remembering:" However, our ROC analyses and modeling work reveal that the effect is due to response bias differences rather than sensitivity change or use of a high-threshold recollection process.