Automatic processing influences free recall: converging evidence from the process dissociation procedure and remember-know judgments

Abstract

Dual-process theories of retrieval suggest that controlled and automatic processing contribute to memory performance. Free recall tests are often considered pure measures of recollection, assessing only the controlled process. We report two experiments demonstrating that automatic processes also influence free recall. Experiment 1 used inclusion and exclusion tasks to estimate recollection and automaticity in free recall, adopting a new variant of the process dissociation procedure. Dividing attention during study selectively reduced the recollection estimate but did not affect the automatic component. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of Experiment 1, and subjects additionally reported remember-know-guess judgments during recall in the inclusion condition. In the latter task, dividing attention during study reduced remember judgments for studied items, but know responses were unaffected. Results from both methods indicated that free recall is partly driven by automatic processes. Thus, we conclude that retrieval in free recall tests is not driven solely by conscious recollection (or remembering) but also by automatic influences of the same sort believed to drive priming on implicit memory tests. Sometimes items come to mind without volition in free recall.

Familiarity and conceptual implicit memory: Individual differences and neural correlates

“…Taken together the results suggest that familiarity also contributes to associative cued recall. Thus, the results are consistent with prior results showing cued recall tasks can be supported at least in part by familiarity (Gruneberg & Monks, 1974; Starns & Ratcliff, 2008; McCabe et al, 2011). …”

“…One prior study that examined this issue found that recollection, but not familiarity, correlated with free recall performance (Quamme, Yonelinas, Widaman, Kroll, & Sauve, 2004). However, there is evidence that associative cued recall performance is related to ‘feelings of knowing’ (Gruneberg & Monks, 1974), that cued recall can be influenced by both controlled recollective processes and automatic familiarity processes (McCabe, Roediger, & Karpicke, 2011). Moreover, both recollection and familiarity are correlated with associative recognition, a form of recognition thought to depend more on recollection (Starns & Ratcliff, 2008).…”

Familiarity Is Related to Conceptual Implicit Memory: An Examination of Individual Differences

“…These results support previous research that suggests that familiarity and conceptual priming rely on a similar underlying process (Yonelinas, 2002), and argue against models that postulate that explicit and implicit memory reflect fundamentally separate processes (e.g., . In addition, the cued recall results are consistent with research demonstrating that both recollection and familiarity support associative recall (McCabe et al, 2011).…”

Processing of Words Related to the Demands of a Previously Solved Problem

“…Graf, Squire, and Mandler (1994) found that amnesic participants' performance was 14% on free recall tests, 58% on a word-stem cued recall test, and 57% on an indirect word-stem completion test. One way of interpreting these participants' achievements in free recall and cued recall tests is in terms of unconscious (automatic) influences of prior experience (see McCabe, Roediger, & Karpicke, 2011). Under this interpretation, these results indicate that automatic influences can quite strongly affect performance in cued recall and to a much lesser extent in free recall.…”