Examinations of memory and decision-based processes in recognition memory

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The proposed research concerns questions related to memory for the occurrence of individual events (item information) and memory for relations between individual events (associative information). Item and associative information are the fundamental building blocks of learning and memory. Recognition performance is measured in terms of the proportion of times participants correctly identify an old item or pair of items (the hit rate) and the proportion of times participants incorrectly identify a new item or pair as old (the false alarm rate). Previous research has shown that some variables increase the hit rate without affecting the false alarm rate. Other variables increase the hit rate and also decrease the false alarm rate. Still other variables can increase both the hit and false alarm rates. My long-term research goal is to develop a comprehensive account of recognition memory that provides a principled explanation of the factors that determine these different outcomes. Recognition decisions can be based on memory for specific details of a prior experience (i.e., recollection), or be based on strong feelings of familiarity in the absence of recollection. Recognition is also influenced by one's willingness to say old, or one's decision criterion. The immediate goals of the proposed research are to (a) distinguish between conditions in which recognition decisions are based to a greater extent on familiarity, or based more on recollection of specific details of a prior experience; and (b) distinguish between memory-based and decision-based influences on recognition performance. These goals will be realized through experimental studies that focus on different phenomena of item and associative recognition memory. As one example, I plan to examine the effects of context on recognition memory by presenting to-be-remembered words against the background of photographs of real-world scenes at study. This procedure will allow me to investigate how old contexts support recognition decisions, and how new contexts that are similar to old contexts give rise to a déjà vu experience based on a sense of familiarity conveyed by the context.