Effects of pre-experimental knowledge on recognition memory
- 1UCL Institute of Neurology and UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom
- 2University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom
- 3School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QH, United Kingdom
Abstract
The influence of pre-experimental autobiographical knowledge on recognition memory was investigated using as memoranda faces that were either personally known or unknown to the participant. Under a dual process theory, such knowledge boosted both recollection- and familiarity-based recognition judgements. Under an unequal variance signal detection model, pre-experimental knowledge increased both the variance and the separation of the target and foil memory strength distributions, boosting hits and correct rejections. Thus, pre-experimental knowledge has profound effects on the multiple, interacting processes that subserve recognition memory, and likely in the neural systems that underpin them.
Footnotes
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↵4 Corresponding author.
E-mail chris.bird{at}ucl.ac.uk; fax 44-20-78132835.
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[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
- Received July 22, 2010.
- Accepted October 10, 2010.
- © 2011 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
