Interrupting recognition memory: Tests of familiarity-based accounts of the revelation effect

Abstract

Watkins and Peynirciog Ïlu (1990) found that, in recognition memory tasks, when items are preceded by a problemsolving task, such as doing an anagram, those items are more likely to be judged as "old," regardless of whether they have been presented in the study list (targets) or not (lures). This outcome was initially labeled the revelation effect, because the problem-solving task involved the probe word that was revealed in the solution to the task prior to the recognitiontest. Westerman and Greene (1998), though,have shown that the same effect occurs when the revelation task involves a word unrelated to the test probe. The revelation effect is thus quite puzzling since it is not predicted, nor easily explained, by current theories of recognition memory.The revelation effect has been found with a wide variety of problem-oriented tasks, such as revealing the test word one letter at a time, as an anagram, or rotating the individualletters of a word, or the word as a whole, by varying degrees (Watkins & Peynirciog Ïlu, 1990). Westerman and Greene (1998) also found that the revelation effect can be obtainedwhen item recognitionis precededby letter memoryspan tasks, letter-counting tasks, and synonym-generation tasks. The revelation effect occurs regardless of success on the problem-solving task (Westerman & Greene, 1998, Experiment 1), and the size of the effect is not influenced by the time and effort dedicated to the task (Luo, 1993;Peynirciog Ïlu & Tekcan, 1993;Westerman & Greene, 1998). To date, no revelation effect has been found when the type of information involved in the revelation task is different from the type of information used for the recognition test. Westerman and Greene found that simple arithmetic problems and a digit-span task presented before verbal recognition probes did not produce a reliable revelation effect.Recent studies (Cameron & Hockley, 2000;Westerman, 2000) have demonstrated another boundary condition for the revelation effect. It appears as though the revelation task influences episodic memory decisions based on familiarity, but not decisions that involve recall or recollection of the study episode. The assumption that the revelation task only influencesfamiliarity-baseddecisionsprovides an explanationof two aspects of the revelation effect. First, the revelation effect is typically greater for false alarms than for hits (cf. Hicks & Marsh, 1998). This would be expected if false alarms are most often the result of familiaritybased decisions, whereas a proportion of hits are based on recollection rather than on familiarity. Second, Bornstein and Neely (2001) examined the revelation effect for judgments of item frequency, and in two of three experiments, found that the revelation effect became larger as actual frequency increased. Brown (1995) has shown that frequency judgments can be based either on a count of retrieved instances (enumeration)or on a more general familiarity-based strategy (estimation). If, as Brown suggests, subjects use an enumeration strategy more often when frequ...

Measures of sensitivity based on a single hit rate and false alarm rate: The accuracy, precision, and robustness of′,A z, andA’

“…In some circumstances, memory illusions (the false belief that something was previously encountered) seem to be the product of changes in decision criterion rather than changes in the actual quality of memory (McDermott & Watson, 2001;Niewiadomski & Hockley, 2001;Verde & Rotello, 2003;Whittlesea, 2002). According to SDT, criterion change has no effect on the characteristics of the evidence distributions, whereas a change in discrimination sensitivity does imply a change in distributional characteristics.…”

ROC curves show that the revelation effect is not a single phenomenon

“…A possibility offered by Niewiadomski and Hockley (2001) is that the revelation task causes one to temporarily lose track of the appropriate criterion setting. Another, offered by Hicks and Marsh (1998), is based on Hirshman's (1995) observation that response bias becomes more liberal as the difficulty of the recognition test increases.…”

Does familiarity change in the revelation effect?

“…Moreover, one might expect that a revelation task requiring more cognitive resources would exacerbate the interaction between revelation and memory tasks. However, Niewiadomski and Hockley (2001) showed that the size of the revelation effect does not change when recognition is preceded by two revealed items rather than one. Using anagrams as revealed items, Peynircioglu and Tekcan (1993) found an analogous result: There is no correlation between revelation effect size and anagram completion time.…”

“…Niewiadomski and Hockley (2001) suggested that disruption from the revelation task causes the subject to temporarily forget the criterion setting called for by the experimental context. Why this would consistently lead to more liberal responding is unclear.…”