People remember information from two basic sources: that derived from external sources (obtained through perceptual processes) and that generated by internal processes such as reasoning, imagination, and thought. Of particular interest to us are the processes people use in deciding whether information initially had an external or an internal source, which we call "reality monitoring." We propose a working model of reality monitoring to account for both discrimination and confusion between memories for thoughts and memories for perceptions. Examples of questions the model addresses are, What types of information are more likely to be represented in memories of external events than in memories of internal events? What cues allow people to decide the origin of a memory? What is the nature of the decision processes involved? Which processes, and under what conditions, are likely to break down and lead to unreliable memory? What assumptions do individuals have about their memory for their thoughts compared to their memory for their perceptions? How accurate are these assumptions? We summarize some research that is encouraging as far as the tractability of some of these problems is concerned and that demonstrates the usefulness of the particular working model proposed here. Both perception of external stimuli and thought produce memories. We have referred to the processes by which a person attributes a memory to an external or an internal source as reality monitoring (Johnson, 1977; Johnson & Raye, Note 1). Of course, in one sense, the memories created by thoughts are no less "real" than those created by perceptual experiences, and the former can be shown to have important consequences; for example, thinking about

Two studies explored potential bases for reality monitoring of naturally occurring autobiographical events. In Study 1, subjects rated phenomenal characteristics of recent and childhood memories. Compared with imagined events, perceived events were given higher ratings on several characteristics, including perceptual information, contextual information, and supporting memories. This was especially true for recent memories. In Study 2, subjects described how they knew autobiographical events had (or had not) happened. For perceived events, subjects were likely to mention perceptual and contextual details of the memory and to refer to other supporting memories. For imagined events, subjects were likely to engage in reasoning based on prior knowledge. The results are consistent with the idea that reality monitoring draws on differences in qualitative characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined events and augment findings from more controlled laboratory studies of complex events (Johnson & Suengas, in press;Suengas & Johnson, 1988).

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In a study of the neural components of automatic and controlled social evaluation, White participants viewed Black and White faces during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. When the faces were presented for 30 ms, activation in the amygdala-a brain region associated with emotion-was greater for Black than for White faces. When the faces were presented for 525 ms, this difference was significantly reduced, and regions of frontal cortex associated with control and regulation showed greater activation for Black than White faces. Furthermore, greater race bias on an indirect behavioral measure was correlated with greater difference in amygdala activation between Black and White faces, and frontal activity predicted a reduction in Black-White differences in amygdala activity from the 30-ms to the 525ms condition. These results provide evidence for neural distinctions between automatic and more controlled processing of social groups, and suggest that controlled processes may modulate automatic evaluation.

It was hypothesized that age-related deficits in episodic memory for feature combinations (e.g., B. L. Chalfonte & M. K. Johnson, 1996) signal, in part, decrements in the efficacy of reflective component processes (e.g., M. K. Johnson, 1992) that support the short-term maintenance and manipulation of information during encoding (e.g., F. 1. M. Craik. R. G. Morris. & M. L. Gick, 1990; T. A. Salthouse, 1990). Consistent with this, age-related binding deficits in a working memory task were found in 2 experiments. Evidence for an age-related test load deficit was also found: Older adults had greater difficulty than young adults when tested on 2 features rather than 1, even when binding was not required. Thus, disruption of source memory in older adults may involve deficits in both encoding processes (binding deficits) and monitoring processes (difficulty accessing multiple features, evaluating them, or both).