ERIC Number: EJ1056501
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Jan
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-7393
EISSN: N/A
Relating the Content and Confidence of Recognition Judgments
Selmeczy, Diana; Dobbins, Ian G.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v40 n1 p66-85 Jan 2014
The Remember/Know procedure, developed by Tulving (1985) to capture the distinction between the conscious correlates of episodic and semantic retrieval, has spawned considerable research and debate. However, only a handful of reports have examined the recognition content beyond this dichotomous simplification. To address this, we collected participants' written justifications in support of ordinary old/new recognition decisions accompanied by confidence ratings using a 3-point scale (high/medium/low). Unlike prior research, we did not provide the participants with any descriptions of Remembering or Knowing and thus, if the justifications mapped well onto theory, they would do so spontaneously. Word frequency analysis (unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams), independent ratings, and machine learning techniques (Support Vector Machine [SVM]) converged in demonstrating that the linguistic content of high and medium confidence recognition differs in a manner consistent with dual process theories of recognition. For example, the use of "I remember," particularly when combined with temporal or perceptual information (e.g., "when," "saw," "distinctly"), was heavily associated with high confidence recognition. Conversely, participants also used the absence of remembering for personally distinctive materials as support for high confidence new reports ("would have remembered"). Thus, participants afford a special status to the presence or absence of remembering and use this actively as a basis for high confidence during recognition judgments. Additionally, the pattern of classification successes and failures of a SVM was well anticipated by the dual process signal detection model of recognition and inconsistent with a single process, strictly unidimensional approach.
Descriptors: Memory, Recognition (Psychology), Semantics, Word Frequency, Experiments, Undergraduate Students, Linguistics, Man Machine Systems, Computation, Models, Statistical Analysis, Decision Making, Task Analysis
American Psychological Association. Journals Department, 750 First Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Tel: 800-374-2721; Tel: 202-336-5510; Fax: 202-336-5502; e-mail: order@apa.org; Web site: http://www.apa.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Institute of Mental Health (DHHS/NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Missouri
Grant or Contract Numbers: R01MH073982