Higham, P.A. & Vokey, J.R. (2004). Illusory recollection and dual-process models of recognition
memory. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57A,
The article is basically about the role of priming in influencing
false “remember” judgments. Higham and Vokey make the argument that the dual process account
provided by Jacoby fails to account for the experience of illusory
recollection.
The authors test the claim that variations in priming
duration will influence illusory recollection.
This issue is of particular interest to our lab in that the familiarity
plus corroboration account specifically claims that increases in familiarity
can produce false remember judgments (this is because the model claims that
familiarity leads to a search of episodic memory for corroborating details
which can sometimes be content borrowed for other related items).
Experiment 1
Participants studied a group of 78 words and were then
tested with 78 targets and 78 lures. Each
test item was preceded by a masked prime which was presented for either a long
duration or a short duration. Long prime
presentation led to an increase in false identifications relative to short
prime presentations. The effect occurred for both remember and know judgments, in each case the effect was quite small.
Experiment 2
Essentially the authors replaced the standard RK
instructions with continuous R and K scales while stressing the independence of
the two scales. In two slight variants
of each other participants gave higher recollection and familiarity ratings to
words preceded by longer primes. Again, this effect appeared to be quite small
but was significant.
Discussion
The authors provided evidence consistent with our
familiarity plus corroboration account.
Priming of unstudied words at test led to an increase in false remember judgments.
The familiarity plus corroboration account claims that false
recollection (i.e. phantom recollection occurs) when a feeling of familiarity
leads to a search of episodic memory for corroboration details. This search sometimes leads to details that
are errant bound from other items (i.e. content borrowing). Thus increases in
familiarity should sometimes lead to increases in false remember judgments.