Continuous recollection versus unitized familiarity in associative recognition.

Recollection has long been thought to play a key role in associative recognition tasks. Evidence that associative recollection might be a threshold process has come from analyses of the associative recognition receiver operating characteristic (ROC). Specifically, the ROC is not as curvilinear as a signal detection theory requires. In addition, the ?-ROC is usually curvilinear, as a threshold recollection model requires, not linear, as a signal detection model requires. In Experiment 1, word pairs were strengthened at study, which yielded a curvilinear ROC and a linear ?-ROC (in accordance with signal detection theory). This result suggests that associative recognition performance was based on a continuous variable, one that likely consists of either unitized familiarity or continuous recollection. The remember–know procedure and an unexpected cued recall test suggested that the more curvilinear ROC in the strong condition was mainly due to increased recollection. In Experiment 2, word pairs were presented for an old–new recognition decision before being presented for an associative recognition decision. When pairs consisting of items not recognized as having been seen on the list were removed from the analysis, the ROC again became curvilinear, the ?-ROC again became linear, and most associative recognition decisions were associated with remember judgments. These findings suggest that the curvilinear ?-ROC often observed on associative recognition tests results from noise, as a mixture signal detection model assumes, and that recollection is a continuous process that yields a curvilinear ROC that is well characterized by signal detection theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of environmental context on recognition memory and claims of remembering.

Recognition memory for words was tested in same or different contexts using the remember/know response procedure. Context was manipulated by presenting words in different screen colors and locations and by presenting words against real-world photographs. Overall hit and false-alarm rates were higher for tests presented in an old context compared to a new context. This concordant effect was seen in both remember responses and estimates of familiarity. Similar results were found for rearranged pairings of old study contexts and targets, for study contexts that were unique or were repeated with different words, and for new picture contexts that were physically similar to old contexts. Similar results were also found when subjects focused attention on the study words, but a different pattern of results was obtained when subjects explicitly associated the study words with their picture context. The results show that subjective feelings of recollection play a role in the effects of environmental context but are likely based more on a sense of familiarity that is evoked by the context than on explicit associations between targets and their study context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of list strength on recollection and familiarity.

Numerous studies have found a null list strength effect (LSE) for recognition sensitivity: Strengthening memory traces associated with some studied items does not impair recognition of nonstrengthened studied items. In Experiment 1, the author found a LSE using receiver operating characteristic-based measures of recognition sensitivity. To account for the discrepancy between this and prior research, the author (a) argues that a LSE occurs for recollection but not for discrimination based on familiarity, and (b) presents self-report data consistent with this hypothesis. Experiment 2 tested the dual-process hypothesis more directly, using switched-plurality (SP) lures to isolate the contribution of recollection. There was a significant LSE for comparisons involving SP lures; the LSE for discrimination of studied items and nominally unrelated lures (which can be supported by familiarity) was not significant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Testing a neurocomputational model of recollection, familiarity, and source recognition.

The authors assess whether the complementary learning systems model of the medial temporal lobes (Norman & O'Reilly, 2003) is able to account for source recognition receiver operating characteristics (ROCs). The model assumes that recognition reflects the contribution of a hippocampally mediated recollection process and a cortically mediated familiarity process. The hippocampal process is found to produce threshold output functions that lead to U-shaped zROCs, whereas the cortical process produces Gaussian signal detection functions and linear zROCs. The model is consistent with several dual process theories of recognition and is capable of producing the types of zROCs observed in studies of item and source recognition. In addition, the model makes the novel prediction that as the level of feature similarity across items increases, the ability of the hippocampus to encode distinct representations for each stimulus will diminish, and the threshold nature of recollection will break down, leading source zROCs to become more linear. The authors conducted 3 new behavioral source experiments that confirmed the model's prediction. The results demonstrate that the model provides a viable account of item and source recognition performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Levels-of-processing effects on recollection and familiarity during transient global amnesia and after recovery.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate the pattern of recollection and familiarity deficits and the modulation of recognition memory performance by the depth of encoding (deep vs. shallow) in transient global amnesia (TGA). Method: Ten patients with TGA and 11 control subjects were assessed during the acute stage and after recovery 7 to 19 days later. Results: Both recollection and familiarity were impaired in the acute stage and showed significant, albeit not complete, recovery by the time of the postacute assessment. The patients did, however, show a significant levels-of-processing effect, which was significantly reduced in acute TGA, but not at follow-up. Conclusion: The significant levels-of-processing effect during acute TGA might be linked to recruitment of the prefrontal cortex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory variability is due to the contribution of recollection and familiarity, not to encoding variability.

It is well established that the memory strength of studied items is more variable than the strength of new items on tests of recognition memory, but the reason why this occurs is poorly understood. One account for this old item variance effect is based on single-process theory, which proposes that this effect is due to variability in how well items are initially encoded into memory (i.e., the encoding variability account). In contrast, dual-process theory argues that old items are more variable because they are influenced by both recollection and familiarity, whereas recognition of new items relies primarily on familiarity. The present study shows that increasing encoding variability did not increase old item variance and that old item variance is directly related to the contribution of recollection. These results indicate that old item memory variability is due to the relative contribution of recollection and familiarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scopolamine impairs human recognition memory: Data and modeling.

Eight subjects studied a set of complex visual images after administration of 0.4 mg scopolamine. Another 8 subjects performed the same task without drug administration. On a subsequent item recognition test, subjects rated, on a 5-point scale, their confidence that the studied pictures and an equal number of unstudied lures were actually presented. Results showed that scopolamine affected responses to studied items, but not unstudied lures, demonstrating an unambiguous effect of scopolamine on recognition memory. To describe the scopolamine-injected subjects' data, the authors constructed a new model of 2-process recognition that includes the A. P. Yonelinas (1994) model as a limiting case. The model analysis suggests that scopolamine affected both familiarity and recollection. In particular, scopolamine did not affect the frequency with which recollection took place, but rather, affected the amount of recollected information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative recognition of face pairs by younger and older adults: The role of familiarity-based processing.

Previous research suggested that older adults have a specific impairment in remembering verbal associative information, but it is unclear how elaboration and familiarity might influence this deficit in situations that involve perceptual processing. In the present experiments, younger and older participants studied male-female pairs of faces. Participants were then administered an associative recognition test consisting of previously studied pairs, pairs that contained previously studied items that were not studied together (i.e., conjunction pairs), and entirely new pairs of faces, and participants were instructed to identify pairs that had been presented together at study. Overall, participants were successful at recognizing previously presented pairs but were highly likely to mistakenly endorse conjunction pairs. This pattern was more pronounced for older adults, especially when items were repeated at encoding. Such data suggest that memory for face pairs relies largely on the familiarity of each face and not on a more precise recollection of associative information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of familiarity in item recognition, associative recognition, and plurality recognition on self-paced and speeded tests.

Four experiments compare the effect of familiarity on item, associative, and plurality recognition on self-paced and speeded tests. The familiarity of test items was enhanced by presenting a prime that matched the subsequent test item. On item and plurality recognition tests, participants were more likely to respond "old" to primed than to unprimed test items. In associative recognition, priming increased the proportion of old responses on a speeded test, but not on a self-paced test. This suggests that familiarity plays a larger role in item and plurality recognition than in associative recognition on self-paced tests. On speeded tests, priming has a similar effect on item, associative, and plurality recognition. Results suggest that item and associative recognition rely differentially on familiarity and recollection. They are also consistent with recent evidence suggesting that different processes underlie plurality and associative recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The contribution of recollection and familiarity to recognition memory: A study of the effects of test format and aging.

Whether the format of a recognition memory task influences the contribution of recollection and familiarity to performance is a matter of debate. The authors investigated this issue by comparing the performance of 64 young (mean age = 21.7 years; mean education = 14.5 years) and 62 older participants (mean age = 64.4 years; mean education = 14.2 years) on a yes-no and a forced-choice recognition task for unfamiliar faces using the remember-know-guess procedure. Familiarity contributed more to forced-choice than to yes-no performance. Moreover, older participants, who showed a decrease in recollection together with an increase in familiarity, performed better on the forced-choice task than on the yes-no task, whereas younger participants showed the opposite pattern. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recollection and familiarity in recognition memory: Adult age differences and neuropsychological test correlates.

Dual process theories account for age-related changes in memory by proposing that old age is associated with deficits in recollection together with invariance in familiarity. The authors evaluated this proposal in recognition by examining recollection and familiarity estimates in young and older adults across 3 process estimation methods: inclusion/exclusion, remember/know, and receiver operating characteristics (ROC). Consistent with a previous literature review (Light, Prull, LaVoie, & Healy, 2000), the authors found age invariance in familiarity when process estimates were derived from the inclusion/exclusion method, but the authors found age differences favoring the young when familiarity estimates were derived from the remember/know and ROC methods. Recollection estimates were lower for older adults in all 3 methods. Recollection and familiarity had variable relationships with frontal- and temporal-lobe measures of neuropsychological functioning in older adults, depending on which method was used to generate process estimates. These data suggest that although recollection deficits appear to be the rule in aging, not all estimates of familiarity show age invariance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recollection and familiarity in amnesic mild cognitive impairment.

Objective: To investigate whether, in patients with amnesic mild cognitive impairment (a-MCI), recognition deficits are mainly due to a selective impairment of recollection rather than familiarity. Methods: Nineteen patients with a-MCI and 23 sex-, age-, and education-matched healthy controls underwent two experimental investigations, using the Process Dissociation Procedure (PDP) and the Remember/Know (R/K) procedure, to assess the differential contribution of recollection and familiarity to their recognition performance. Results: Both experimental procedures revealed a selective preservation of familiarity in a-MCI patients. Moreover, the R/K procedure showed a statistically significant impairment of recollection in a-MCI patients for words that were either read or anagrammed during the study phase. Conclusions: A-MCI is known to be commonly associated with a high risk of conversion to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Several previous studies have demonstrated a characteristic impairment of episodic memory in a-MCI, with an early dysfunction of recognition. Our findings are consistent with the knowledge of neurodegeneration occurring in AD, which is characterized, at the earliest disease stages, by a selective involvement of the entorhinal cortex. Moreover, the current study supports the dual process model of recognition, which hypothesizes recollection and familiarity to be independent processes associated with distinct anatomical substrates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of repetition on associative recognition in young and older adults: Item and associative strengthening.

Young and older adults studied word pairs and later discriminated studied pairs from various types of foils including recombined word-pairs and foil pairs containing one or two previously unstudied words. We manipulated how many times a specific word pair was repeated (1 or 5) and how many different words were associated with a given word (1 or 5) to tease apart the effects of item familiarity from recollection of the association. Rather than making simple old/new judgments, subjects chose one of five responses: (a) Old-Old (original), (b) Old-Old (rearranged), (c) Old-New, (d) New-Old, (e) New-New. Veridical recollection was impaired in old age in all memory conditions. There was evidence for a higher rate of false recollection of rearranged pairs following exact repetition of study pairs in older but not younger adults. In contrast, older adults were not more susceptible to interference than young adults when one or both words of the pair had multiple competing associates. Older adults were just as able as young adults to use item familiarity to recognize which word of a foil was old. This pattern suggests that recollection problems in advanced age are because of a deficit in older adults' formation or retrieval of new associations in memory. A modeling simulation provided good fits to these data and offers a mechanistic explanation based on an age-related reduction of working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

In search of perceptual influences of sentence context on word recognition.

A major issue in the study of word perception concerns the nature (perceptual or nonperceptual) of sentence context effects. The authors compared effects of legal, word replacement, nonword replacement, and transposed contexts on target word performance using the Reicher-Wheeler task to suppress nonperceptual influences of contextual and lexical constraint. Experiment 1 showed superior target word performance for legal (e.g., "it began to flap/flop") over all other contexts and for transposed over word replacement and nonword replacement contexts. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with higher constraint contexts (e.g., "the cellar is dark/dank") and Experiment 3 showed that strong constraint contexts improved performance for congruent (e.g., "born to be wild") but not incongruent (e.g., mild) target words. These findings support the view that the very perception of words can be enhanced when words are presented in legal sentence contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of conceptual processing on familiarity-based recognition.

Two experiments compared the impact of conceptual and perceptual processing at encoding on the familiarity-based recognition of items without preexisting conceptual representations. The stimuli for the experiments were visual designs and nonsense letter strings. The process dissociation procedure was used in conjunction with the process dissociation equations and the Dual Process Signal Detection model to assess the contributions of familiarity-based recognition and recollection in the recognition of the stimuli. A conceptual processing advantage was observed in both experiments: familiarity-based recognition was enhanced more by conceptual than by perceptual processing at encoding. It is suggested that the results may be problematic for the view that conceptual priming underlies the conceptual processing advantage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conjunction error rates on a continuous recognition memory test: Little evidence for recollection.

Two experiments examined conjunction memory errors on a continuous recognition task where the lag between parent words (e.g., blackmail, jailbird) and later conjunction lures (blackbird) was manipulated. In Experiment 1, contrary to expectations, the conjunction error rate was highest at the shortest lag (1 word) and decreased as the lag increased. In Experiment 2 the conjunction error rate increased significantly from a 0- to a 1-word lag, then decreased slightly from a 1- to a 5-word lag. The results provide mixed support for simple familiarity and dual-process accounts of recognition. Paradoxically, searching for an item in memory does not appear to be a good encoding task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential effects of normal aging on recollection of concrete and abstract words.

Verbal memory is known to be affected by word features. Concrete words are remembered better than abstract words (concreteness effect), presumably due to the concurrent activation of image-based and/or semantic associations. Vivid remembering during recognition (recollection) has been linked to the hippocampus and is thought to be more affected by healthy aging than familiarity-based recognition. Recent evidence also implicated the hippocampus in the processing of concrete words. Based on these observations, we hypothesized age-related changes in recollection to affect concrete words more than abstract words. This prediction was tested in a cross-sectional design with three consecutive age groups (mean ages 21 years, 42 years, and 61 years). Changes in recollection, but not familiarity, across ages were significantly modulated by word concreteness. Recollection of concrete words showed a steady decline across age, while recollection of abstract words decreased only from young to middle age, leading to a reduced concreteness effect in the oldest group. These findings are consistent with the idea that changes in hippocampally mediated recollective processes during aging affect concrete words more than abstract words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How to say no: Single- and dual-process theories of short-term recognition tested on negative probes.

Three experiments with short-term recognition tasks are reported. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants decided whether a probe matched a list item specified by its spatial location. Items presented at study in a different location (intrusion probes) had to be rejected. Serial position curves of positive, new, and intrusion probes over the probed location's position were mostly parallel. Serial position curves of intrusion probes over their position of origin were again parallel to those of positive probes. Experiment 3 showed largely parallel serial position effects for positive probes and for intrusion probes plotted over positions in a relevant and an irrelevant list, respectively. The results support a dual-process theory in which recognition is based on familiarity and recollection, and recollection uses 2 retrieval routes, from context to item and from item to context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence context, word recognition, and repetition blindness.

When the sentence She ran her best time yet in the rice last week is displayed using rapid serial visual presentation, viewers sometimes misread rice as race (M. C. Potter, A. Moryadas,1. Abrams, & A. Noel, 1993). Seven experiments combined misreading and repetition blindness (RB) paradigms to determine whether misreading of a word because of biasing sentence context represents a genuine perceptual effect. In Experiments 1-4, misreading a word either caused or prevented RB for a downstream word, depending on whether orthographic similarity was increased or decreased. Additional experiments examined temporal parameters of misreading RB and tested the hypothesis that RB results from reconstructive memory processes. Results suggest that the effect of prior context occurs during perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)