The use of remember–know judgments to assess subjective experience associated with memory retrieval, or as measures of recollection and familiarity processes, has been controversial. In the current study we had participants think aloud during study and provide verbal reports at test for remember–know and confidence judgments. Results indicated that the vast majority of remember judgments for studied items were associated with recollection from study , but this correspondence was less likely for high-confidence judgments . Instead, high-confidence judgments were more likely (...) than remember judgments to be associated with incorrect recollection and a lack of recollection. Know judgments were typically associated with a lack of recollection , but still included recollection from the study context . Thus, although remember judgments provided fairly accurate assessments of retrieval including contextual details, know judgments did not provide accurate assessments of retrieval lacking contextual details. (shrink)

The remember/know procedure is the most widely used method to investigate recollection and familiarity. It uses trial-by-trial reports to determine how much recollection and familiarity contribute to different kinds of recognition. Few other methods provide information about individual memory judgements and no alternative allows such direct indications of recollection and familiarity influences. Here we review how the RK procedure has been and should be used to help resolve theoretical disagreements about the processing and neural bases of components of recognition memory. (...) Emphasis is placed on procedural weaknesses and a possible confound of recollection and familiarity with recognition memory strength. Recommendations are made about how to minimise these problems including using modified versions of the procedure. The proposals here are important for improving behavioural and lesion research, and vital for brain imaging work. (shrink)

The Remember–Know paradigm is commonly used to examine experiential states during recognition. In this paradigm, whether a Know response is defined as a high-confidence state of certainty or a low-confidence state based on familiarity varies across researchers, and differences in definitions and instructions have been shown to influence participants’ responding. Using a novel approach, in three internet-based questionnaires participants were placed in the role of ‘memory expert’ and classified others’ justifications of recognition decisions. Results demonstrated that participants reliably differentiated between (...) others’ memory experiences – both in terms of confidence and other inherent differences in the justifications. Furthermore, under certain conditions, manipulations of confidence were found to shift how items were assigned to subjective experience categories . Findings are discussed in relation to the relationship between subjective experience and confidence, and the separation of Know and Familiar response categories within the Remember–Know paradigm. (shrink)

Two experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the nature of the remember–know instructions given to participants influences whether these responses reflect different memory states or different degrees of memory confidence. Participants studied words and nonwords, a variable that has been shown to dissociate confidence from remember–know judgments and were given a set of published remember–know instructions that either emphasized know judgments as highly confident or as less confident states of recognition. Experiment 1 replicated the standard finding showing that (...) remembering and knowing were differently influenced by the word–nonword variable, whereas confidence responses were not. By contrast, Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of data for remember–know and sure–unsure responses, thus demonstrating the importance of the instructions for interpreting the relationship between remembering and knowing and confidence. (shrink)