Revisiting the remember–know task: Replications of Gardiner and Java (1990)

Abstract

One of the most evidential behavioral results for two memory processes comes from Gardiner and Java (Memory & Cognition, 18, 23–30 1990). Participants provided more “remember” than “know” responses for old words but more know than remember responses for old nonwords. Moreover, there was no effect of word/nonword status for new items. The combination of a crossover interaction for old items with an invariance for new items provides strong evidence for two distinct processes while ruling out criteria or bias explanations. Here, we report a modern replication of this study. In three experiments, (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) with larger numbers of items and participants, we were unable to replicate the crossover. Instead, our data are more consistent with a single-process account. In a fourth experiment (Experiment 3), we were able to replicate Gardiner and Java’s baseline results with a sure–unsure paradigm supporting a single-process explanation. It seems that Gardiner and Java’s remarkable crossover result is not replicable.

Predictions and rewards affect decision-making but not subjective experience

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A conceptual–perceptual distinctiveness processing account of the superior recognition memory of pictures over environmental sounds

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You won't believe it! Truth judgments for clickbait headlines benefit (but less so) from prior exposure

“…However, simple recognition tasks alone provide no estimates of memory processes, as familiarity and source recollection both typically support “old” responses. One possibility is to complement recognition tasks with a Remember/Know paradigm (e.g., Gardiner, 1988; Tulving, 1985; but see Haaf et al, 2021; in the context of the truth effect, see Law, 1998) to have access to retrieval phenomenology. Such an approach, which could be combined with the experimental approach mentioned above, would allow investigating the relationship between “true” judgments on clickbait versus non‐clickbait statements and the phenomenology at retrieval as estimated in a separate, direct memory task.…”