FAMILIARITY IN ASSOCIATIVE AND PLURALITY RECOGNITION

State University New York Binghamton, Binghamton NY

Investigators

Abstract

Recognition memory is the process of determining whether or not an event occurred in the past. A full understanding of the processes that underlie recognition memory are central to our understanding of many important topics such as the reliability of eyewitness memory, and reports of childhood memories, as well as memory disorders such as amnesia and the symptoms associated with Alzheimer's disease. Recently a great deal of progress has occurred in the development of formal models of recognition memory. Many of these models assume that recognition judgments are based on a single familiarity process. However, there is evidence that a slower recall-like process, which is termed recollection, contributes to recognition performance in certain cases. Two cases that have been theorized to involve recollection rather than relying exclusively on familiarity are associative-recognition and plurality recognition. In the case of associative recognition, evidence that judgments are based on recollection is indirect and consists primarily of the dissociations found between item-recognition and associative-recognition across several variables (e.g., word frequency the time course, of forgetting, the time course of retrieval. These dissociations have led several researchers to suggest that Global-Matching Models may need to be modified to include a second recall-like retrieval process. The purpose of this study is to test directly the role of familiarity on both associative-recognition and plurality recognition by manipulating the familiarity of the test items. The familiarity of the test items will be enhanced through priming and through the manipulation of the perceptual fluency of test items ., 999Because familiarity is generally assumed to be a fast and automatic process and recollection is assumed to be a slower and more effortful process, the effect of enhanced familiarity on these tasks will also be studied under both speeded (i.e., participants will be required to respond quickly to a test item) and non-speeded (i.e., self-paced) testing conditions. The results of these studies will allow a comparison of the role of familiarity in item recognition, associative-recognition and plurality recognition to better understand the processes that underlie each type of task and to assess the adequacy of models of recognition memory that postulate a single familiarity assessment process.