Everyday Amnesia: Residual Memory for High Confidence Misses and Implications for Decision Models of Recognition

Christopher J. Berry*, David R. Shanks

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

Despite studying a list of items only minutes earlier, when reencountered in a recognition memory test, undergraduate participants often say with total confidence that they have not studied some of the items before. Such high confidence miss (HCM) responses have been taken as evidence of rapid and complete forgetting and of everyday amnesia (Roediger & Tekin, 2020). We investigated (a) if memory for HCMs is completely lost or whether a residual memory effect exists and (b) whether dominant decision models predict the effect. Participants studied faces (Experiments 1a, 2, and 3) or words (Experiment 1b), then completed a singleitem recognition memory task, followed by either (a) a two-alternative forced-choice recognition task, in which the studied and nonstudied alternatives on each trial were matched for their previous old/new decision and confidence rating (Experiments 1 and 2) or (b) a second single-item recognition task in which the targets and foils were HCMs and high confidence correct rejections, respectively (Experiment 3). In each experiment, participants reliably distinguished HCMs from high-confidence correct rejections. The unequal variance signal detection and dual-process signal detection models were fit to the single-item recognition data, and the parameter estimates were used to predict the memory effect for HCMs. The dual-process signal detection model predicted the residual memory effect (as did another popular model, the mixture signal detection theory model). However, the unequal variance signal detection model incorrectly predicted a negative, or no, effect, invalidating this model. The residual memory effect for HCMs demonstrates that everyday amnesia is not associated with complete memory loss and distinguishes between decision models.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1790-1815
Number of pages26
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: General
Volume153
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 25 Apr 2024

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
  • General Psychology
  • Developmental Neuroscience

Keywords

  • dual-process signal detection model
  • everyday amnesia
  • forgetting
  • recognition memory
  • unequal variance signal detection model

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