Examining recognition criterion rigidity during testing using a biased-feedback technique: Evidence for adaptive criterion learning

Can corrective feedback improve recognition memory?

“…Theories proposing that consciously controlled recall-like retrieval processes can contribute to recognition judgments (dual-process models; e.g., Jacoby, 1991;Mandler, 1980) or theories that emphasize attributionmaking processes in recognition (e.g., Jacoby, Kelley, & Dywan, 1989;Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993;Lindsay, 2008;Whittlesea, 2002b) allow multiple potential avenues for improvement in recognition sensitivity via feedback. As Han and Dobbins (2008) noted, feedback might selectively reinforce responses that are based on the use of effective retrieval strategies or might sharpen participants' interpretations of their internal responses to test items such that they glean from these responses information that is diagnostic of oldness or newness (Dodson & Johnson, 1993;Gruppuso, Lindsay, & Kelley, 1997;Jacoby, Yonelinas, & Jennings, 1997;Jennings & Jacoby, 1993). Evidence of just such effects of feedback has been obtained in tasks manipulating participants' interpretations of cognitive fluency (Unkelbach, 2006(Unkelbach, , 2007 and on source-monitoring performance in an eyewitness suggestibility paradigm (Lane, Roussel, Villa, & Morita, 2007).…”

“…Of the studies in which base rates were manipulated, Rhodes and Jacoby (2007) and Verde and Rotello (2007) found feedback-based criterion shifts in recognition of words, whereas Estes and Maddox (1995) did not. This pattern of findings suggests that a base-rate manipulation alone is not a sufficient basis for criterion shifting via feedback; rather, the base-rate distinction must be made more salient (e.g., via contextual cues; Rhodes & Jacoby, 2007), the items themselves must possess some readily apparent feature diagnostic of oldness (e.g., strength; Verde & Rotello, 2007), or the base rates of the feedback itself must be manipulated (Han & Dobbins, 2008, 2009). The present experiments provide several tests of the potential of complete and accurate feedback to influence response bias, without overt contextual or featural cues.…”

“…tiple study-test cycles have been employed to assess feedback effects, leaving open the question of whether such effects arose strictly at test or whether they arose because feedback at test influenced subsequent study processing (Estes & Maddox, 1995;Han & Dobbins, 2008;Jennings & Jacoby, 2003;Rhodes & Jacoby, 2007). In the experiments reported here (and in a few previously published studies described below; Titus, 1973;Verde & Rotello, 2007), a single test list followed a single study list, and each test item was presented only once.…”

“…Verde and Rotello did not manipulate the presence of feedback within experiments, but acrossexperiment comparisons indicated that the participants only made such adjustments with the aid of feedback (Experiment 5). Han and Dobbins (2008) demonstrated that feedback can produce dynamic criterion shifting without manipulations of target base rates (Estes & Maddox, 1995;Rhodes & Jacoby, 2007) or target strength (Verde & Rotello, 2007). These researchers elicited liberal or conservative bias shifts across test blocks by giving false positive feedback either to false alarms (the lax criterion condition) or misses (the conservative criterion condition).…”

“…Four recent studies have examined the effect of feedback on criterion placement in recognition (Han & Dobbins, 2008, 2009Rhodes & Jacoby, 2007;Verde & Rotello, 2007). Rhodes and Jacoby conducted a recognition test in which the probability of a probe's oldness (.67 or .33) and its location on the computer screen covaried.…”