The convolution analysis of response time (RT) distributions (Ratcliff & Murdock, 1976) was examined in three experiments employing four different cognitive tasks. In Experiment 1, a visual search task was contrasted with a short-term memory (Steinberg, 1966) search task. In Experiments 2 and 3, a relative judgment of recency task was contrasted with a two-alternative, forced-choice recognition task. Taken together, the experiments demonstrate that the convolution analysis provides a good description of RT distributions in a variety of tasks, and more important, that the parameters of the convolution analysis can: behave differentially in different tasks. It is argued that the parameters of the convolution analysis can play an important role in discriminating between models, and in critically evaluating models that may be otherwise acceptable.Mean response time (RT) has often been used to study cognitive processes, but other properties of RT distributions have received far less attention. Nevertheless, other properties of RT distributions provide more information than can be obtained from mean RT alone, and these have been shown to be important in discriminating between models (Sternberg, 1973) and in critically evaluating otherwise acceptable models (Ratcliff & Murdock, 1976).Two methods have been used to characterize the properties of RT distributions. Sternberg (1964Sternberg ( , 1969 used moments and cumulants to describe distributional properties. However, Ratcliff (1979) identified three major problems with this method. First, the variance associated with the estimates of the higher moments and cumulants is extremely large. Thus, to obtain stable estimates of higher moments, a large number of observations per

The authors use the qualitative differences logic to demonstrate that 2 separate memory influences underlie performance in recognition memory tasks, familiarity and recollection. The experiments focus on the mirror effect, the finding that more memorable stimulus classes produce higher hit rates but lower false-alarm rates than less memorable stimulus classes. The authors demonstrate across a number of experiments that manipulations assumed to decrease recollection eliminate or even reverse the hit-rate portion of the mirror effect while leaving the false-alarm portion intact. This occurs whether the critical distinction between conditions is created during the test phase or manipulated during the study phase. Thus, when recollection is present, it dominates familiarity so that the hit-rate portion of the mirror effect primarily reflects recollection; when recollection is largely absent, the opposite pattern associated with the familiarity process emerges.

Four experiments are reported that extend previous research and firmly demonstrate that item information is more susceptible to decay or interference than is associative information. The forgetting rate for single words is shown to be greater than the forgetting rate for associations between random pairs of words in a continuous recognition paradigm using both yes-no (Experiment 1) and forced-choice (Experiments 2 and 3) test procedures. Item recognition is also shown to decline more than associative discrimination between an immediate and an end-ofsession delayed test in the study-test paradigm. The findings provide further empirical support for a process-oriented distinction between item and associative information and pose a challenge for global matching models of recognition memory.

Recognition memory for item information (single words) and associative information (word pairs) was tested immediately and after retention intervals of 30 min and 1 day (Experiment 1) and 2 days and 7 days (Experiment 2) using Tulvmg's (1985) remember/lmow response procedure. Associative recognition decisions were accompanied by more "remember" responses and less "know" responses than item recognition decisions. Overall recognition performance and the proportion of remember responses declined at similar rates for item and associative information. The pattern of results for item recognition was consistent with Donaldson's (1996) single-factor signal detection model of remember/lmow responses, as comparisons based on A' between overall item recognition and remember item recognition showed no significant differences. For associative recognition, however, A' for remember responses was reliably greater than for overall recognition. The results show that recollection plays a significant role in associative recognition.

Activation decay functions were examined in two different tasks: lexical decision and word recognition. Activation (amount of facilitation) was measured both for item repetition and for priming between newly learned associates. Results indicate that there are at least three different components of activation: a short-term component that decays with one or two intervening items and that appears to be common to priming and repetition; an intermediate component for repetition in recognition; and a long-term component for repetition.