Memory Awareness Following Speeded Compared with Unspeeded Picture Recognition

Abstract

A remember-know paradigm was used to assess memory awareness following speeded and unspeeded yes/no picture recognition. The beneficial effects of picture size congruency at study and test occurred with speeded as well as with unspeeded recognition. In each case, they were associated with remembering, not with knowing, which remained invariant. Thus, size congruency effects were associated with remembering even when recognition occurred more automatically and hence may be more dependent on a relatively fast familiarity process. In a second experiment, speeded remember responses were compared with remember responses that followed speeded yes/no recognition. There was more remembering when it was the remember responses that were speeded, contrary to what might be expected if remembering reflects a relatively slow recollection process. These results have implications for the ability of dual-process models of recognition memory to account for memory awareness.

Recognition memory and awareness: Occurrence of perceptual effects in remembering or in knowing depends on conscious resources at encoding, but not at retrieval

“…Those results contrasted with results obtained by Gardiner et al (2005). They investigated the picture size congruence effect at short and long response deadlines, but although the effect occurred at both deadlines, it was significantly reduced at the shorter one.…”

“…The perceptual effects tended to be smaller in remembering at the short response deadline than at the long response deadline. Although this effect was statistically significant in only one of the two cases, it was also obtained by Gardiner et al (2005), and so it should not be dismissed lightly. The implication is that there may be some small impact of the conscious resources available at retrieval when the effects occur in remembering, but not when they occur in knowing.…”

“…In contrast, the perceptual effects of study-test congruence, like levels-of-processing effects , were found to be very little affected by fast, as compared with slow, recognition decisions (see, too, Gardiner et al, 2005). Not only were these effects little influenced at the behavioral level by differences in the time allowed for recognition judgments and, hence, differences in the conscious resources available at retrieval, but also there was no indication of any effects in knowing even with fast judgments.…”

“…With divided attention at encoding, these perceptual effects occurred, instead, in knowing (see, also, Gardiner et al, 2001;Karayianni & Gardiner, 2003). These perceptual effects were generally unaffected by the speed with which recognition judgments had to be made, and they were associated with the same state of awareness regardless of whether those judgments were fast or slow (see, also, Gardiner et al, 2005;. Also, knowing, as well as remembering, tended to increase with slow, as compared with fast, recognition judgments-in some cases, to pretty much the same extent as did remembering.…”

“…In one set of studies, conscious resources were reduced at encoding by the addition of a divided attention task (Gardiner et al, 2001;Karayianni & Gardiner, 2003). In the other set of studies, conscious resources were reduced at retrieval by having a speeded recognition test (Gardiner, Konstantinou, Karayianni, & Gregg, 2005;Gardiner, Ramponi, & Richardson-Klavehn, 1999;.…”