Recollection is more than retrieving context or source memory: evidence from ERPs of Recognition and Source Memory combinations

Abstract

The goal of this study was to investigate a relatively unstudied memory condition for paradoxical combinations of item + source memory confidence responses, which challenged the conventional views of the memory processes supporting item and source memory judgments. We studied instances in which people provided accurate source memory judgments (conventionally ascribed as representing recollection) after having first produced low-confidence item recognition hits for the same items (conventionally thought to reflect familiarity-based processing). This paradoxical combination does not fit traditional accounts of being recollection (because it had low-confidence recognition) nor accounts of familiarity (since it had accurate source memory), and event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to adjudicate which processes support these kinds of memories. ERP results were unlike the conventional ERP effects of memory, lacking both an FN400 and the parietal old-new effect (LPC), and instead exhibited a significant negative-going ERP effect occurring later in time (800-1200ms) in central-parietal sites. Behavioral measures of response times revealed a crossover interaction: low confident recognition hits were slower during recognition but faster during source memory when compared to the opposite pattern seen for instances of high confident hits. Results provide a comprehensive characterization of the individual variability of the FN400 and LPC effects of memory, while adding the behavioral and physiological characterization of a late negative-going ERP effect for accurate source memory without recollection. Conclusions indicated that episodic context could be retrieved independently from recollection, while suggesting a role for a process of context familiarity that is independent from item-familiarity.

Recallable but not recognizable: The influence of semantic priming in recall paradigms

“…Thus, studies designed to systematically manipulate and measure these variables could prove valuable for further characterizing the phenomena investigated in the current suite of studies for recognition failure of recallable words.Another direction to explore in the future could be examining the role of memory confidence as well as the relative sequential timing of items recalled and recognized by participants. While our current recall-recognition studies sought to further scrutinize the properties of recall and recognition within our experimental paradigm of yes/no recognition, future studies may benefit from including recognition confidence ratings (e.g., Addante et al, 2011;Addante, Ranganath, Olichney, & Yonelinas, 2012Addante et al, 2020;Woodruff, Hayama, & Rugg, 2006;Yonelinas et al, 2010Yonelinas et al, , 2005Yonelinas et al, , 2004Yu & Rugg, 2010), and there are other approaches that could reveal new insights, such as examining memory strength in free recall over time and exploring output order in free recall (sequence and serial position effects) or exploring oscillatory correlates in EEG (Watrous & Buchanan, 2020). Specifically, one might predict that high confidence items (i.e., recognized recalls) are output in earlier serial output positions, followed by low confidence items (i.e., recognition failures), and then correct rejections.…”