processing (LoP) and tested recognition memory using two response-signal delays (500 and 1500 ms). In Experiment. 1, a modality effect was found for fast, but ...
Conceptual Automaticity in Recognition Memory: Levels-of-processing Effects on Familiarity JEFFREY P. TOTH Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre and The University of Toronto
Abstract Recognition memory can reflect both conscious recollection and automatically generated feelings of familiarity. Previous research has suggested that perceptual factors mediate familiarity. Three experiments show that familiarity can also arise from prior conceptual (meaningbased) processing. Each experiment manipulated level of processing (LoP) and tested recognition memory using two response-signal delays (500 and 1500 ms). In Experiment 1, a modality effect was found for fast, but not slow, responses, thus supporting dual-process theories; the LoP effect was reliable at both points in time. In Experiment 2, recollection was set in opposition to familiarity by telling subjects to accept only test items from a to-beremembered list which followed the incidental (LoP) study list; fast responses were associated with significantly more "false-alarms" to words encoded semantically than those encoded nonsemantically. Experiment 3 used the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) to obtain quantitative estimates of recollection and familiarity. Both estimates were elevated by prior conceptual processing. Moreover, estimates of recollection, but not familiarity, were affected by response-signal delay, suggesting functional independence between the two processes. Relations to implicit memory are discussed.
Dissociations between implicit and explicit memory tests suggest a fundamental distinction between intentional retrieval and retrieval that is more spontaneous or automatic 0acoby, 1991; Roediger, 1990; Schacter, 1987). Importantly, the necessity of this distinction is not limited to explaining dissociations between tests; process dissociations have shown that these two forms of retrieval can operate simultaneously to affect performance on ostensibly implicit (Toth, Reingold, & Jacoby, 1994) and explicit tests (Jacoby, Toth, & Yonelinas, 1993). In addition to investigating how memory is related to intentionality, researchers have also been interested in the types of information that mediate effects of the past. Critical here has been the role of perceptual and conceptual (meaningbased) information. Although early research suggested that explicit memory was conceptual and implicit memory perceptual (e.g., Jacoby & Dallas, 1981), subsequent studies have shown that perceptual variables can influence
performance on explicit tests (e.g., Hunt & Toth, 1990) and conceptual variables can influence performance on implicit tests (Blaxton, 1989; Toth & Hunt, 1990; for reviews, see Roediger & McDermott, 1993; Toth & Reingold, 1996). This complex set of finding recommends detailed comparisons of different tests of memory, as well as the processes that underlie performance on these tests. Recognition occupies a unique position among tests of memory. Although ostensibly explicit, recognition appears to involve some of the same processes underlying performance on other tests, both implicit and explicit. Similarities have been shown between recognition and implicit word identification (e.g., Jacoby & Dallas, 1981), and between recognition and explicit recall (e.g., Mandler, Pearlstone, & Koopmans, 1969). More recently, researchers using measures of subjective experience - such as the "remember/know" procedure - have suggested that recognition and implicit priming reflect common underlying processes (e.g., Gardiner, 1988a; but see Richardson-Klavehn, Gardiner, & Java, in press). Consistent with this possibility, Roediger, Weldon, and Chain's (1989) characterized recognition as involving both data-driven and conceptually driven processes. Taken together, these observations situate recognition at the center of the test-relationship issue; as noted by Johnson and Hasher (1987), "Understanding recognition will certainly fit a major piece into the puzzle of the relations among memory tasks" (p. 642). Dual-process theories (Atkinson & Juola, 1974; Jacoby, 1991; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Mandler, 1980, 1991) have proven particularly useful for understanding the nature of recognition. These theories propose that recognition decisions can be based on two qualitatively different processes, recollection and familiarity. Recollection is thought to be an intentional, consciously-controlled process that involves the recall or reconstruction of a prior event; it is a relatively slow, effortful process that, if successful, culminates in awareness of the details making up a prior experience. Familiarity, in contrast, is viewed as a more unintentional or automatic form of memory in that it occurs quickly, spontaneously, and without intent. Unlike recollection, familiarity does not involve awareness of episodic details; rather, familiarity is a. felt experience similar to emotion (see Jacoby, Kelley, & Dywan, 1989a) - it is a primitive, yet compelling, feeling that a prior
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1996, 50: 1, 123-138
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event has recurred. The issue addressed in this paper concerns the type of mnemonic information that mediates subsequent familiarity. Dual-process theories have traditionally described familiarity as a perceptual phenomenon. Mandler (1980), for example, equates familiarity with the activation of an underlying memory trace, a process thought to involve "sensory and perceptual integrations of the elements of the target event" (p.255). For this view, familiarity is a direct function of perceptual integration; thus "activation/familiarity effects are clearly perceptual" (Mandler, 1991, p.209). Although less tied to a theory of representation, Jacoby and Dallas (1981) also proposed a perceptual basis for familiarity. They noted that perceptual experience with a stimulus often enhances (or primes) subsequent reprocessing of that stimulus. In the context of an explicit recognition judgment, the enhanced processing or "perceptual fluency" is experienced as familiarity and attributed to the past (i.e., to memory for prior presentation). In accordance with this view, a number of studies have shown that recognition memory decisions are related to perceptual fluency (Johnston, Dark, & Jacoby, 1985; Johnston, Hawley, & Elliot, 1991; Kelley, Jacoby, & Hollingshead, 1989; Whittlesea et al., 1990). But is familiarity limited to the repetition of perceptual operations? Or can memory for meaning-based processing also generate feelings of familiarity? Evidence for conceptual familiarity. Although much of the research directed at familiarity has focused on perceptual processing, a number of more recent studies suggest that conceptual processing can also support familiarity. The most direct evidence has come from experiments employing the process dissociation procedure. Jacoby (1991) found that solving anagrams increased estimated familiarity for solution words relative to when these solution words were simply read. Given the physical mismatch between anagrams and their solutions, this result suggests that familiarity can be based on factors other than perceptual repetition. Even more suggestive of automatic conceptual transfer are process-dissociation experiments showing higher levels of estimated familiarity for words studied in the context of associatively related, as compared to unrelated, words 0acoby & Kelley, 1991). As the same perceptual information was repeated from study to test (i.e., single words from related and unrelated word pairs), this effect appears to be based on the meaningful processing induced by the presence of semantic associates. Additional evidence for conceptual effects on familiarity comes from experiments investigating "illusions of familiarity" in recognition. Whittlesea (1993) manipulated the context in which recognition test items were presented in order to influence how fluently these items were initially processed. He found that manipulations of both perceptual and conceptual fluency influenced recognition judgments (i.e., subjects tended to call fluently processed items "old"). Importantly, these effects occurred for unstudied, as well as studied, items; and were larger for conceptual, as compared to perceptual, context manipulations. A third source of evidence for meaning-based familiar-
Toth ity is recent reports of conceptual priming on implicit tests of memory. Conceptual priming refers to a facilitation in performance on implicit tests which use semantic, rather than perceptual, retrieval cues; priming of this sort has been reported for a number of conceptual tests including exemplar generation and free association (Blaxton, 1989; Srinivas & Roediger, 1990). The term "conceptual priming" has also been used to describe generation or levels-of-processing effects on "perceptual" implicit tests such as word identification and fragment completion, and effects of this sort have also been reported (Brown & Mitchell, 1994; Challis & Brodbeck, 1992; Gardiner, 1988b; Hirshman, Snodgrass, Mindes, & Feenan, 1990; Toth & Hunt, 1990). Both forms of conceptual priming are thought to reflect memory for meaning-based processing initially evoked at encoding (see Toth & Reingold, 1996, for review). Thus, if recognition and implicit memory performance reflect common automatic processes (Gardiner, 1988a; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Mandler, 1991), then conceptual priming suggests the possibility of conceptually-based automatic influences in recognition memory. Overall then, a number of diverse findings suggest that memory for meaning-based processing can support familiarity. So far, however, these suggestions have been based on estimates from the process dissociation procedure, on anagram solving Qacoby, 1991) or associative context Qacoby & Kelley, 1991) as the conceptual encoding conditions, or on conceptual manipulations at test designed to produce illusions of familiarity (Whittlesea, 1993). The present experiments attempted to confirm and extend these studies by using a manipulation - levels of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) - that clearly involves different degrees of meaningful processing at encoding. Moreover, conceptual effects on familiarity were identified using both the process dissociation procedure (Experiment 3), and a more direct response-signal procedure (Experiment 1-3). The response-signal procedure. Comparisons between implicit and explicit tests generally assume that test instructions exert sufficient control over a subject's responding that performance reflects only one kind of retrieval (for a critique of this assumption, see Jacoby, 1991; Reingold & Toth, 1996; Toth et al., 1994, 1995). Measuring controlled and automatic influences in recognition memory presents a more difficult challenge because it is likely that subjects use both recollection and familiarity throughout the test. One method that might be useful in this regard is the response-signal procedure (Reed, 1973). In this procedure, subjects are presented with individual test items followed by a signal to make their recognition judgment. By varying the interval between test item and response signal, the experimenter can control the amount of time available for retrieval. If familiarity is available earlier than recollection (Atkinson & Juola, 1974; Juola, Fischler, Wood, & Atkinson, 1971) the responsesignal procedure may provide a way to separate the two bases for recognition. The response-signal procedure has been used most often
Conceptual Automaticity to produce speed-accuracy trade-off functions useful for inferring the dynamics of retrieval (see Dosher, 1984; Gronland & Ratcliff, 1989; Hintzman & Curran, 1994). These studies typically use a wide range of response signals (e.g., from 200 ms to 3 s). In the present study, only two response signals were used as the main goal was simply to eliminate, or substantially reduce, conscious recollection so as to better observe familiarity-based responding. If recognition truly reflects qualitatively different forms of retrieval, two response signals should be sufficient for dissociating the two processes (see Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984; Yonelinas & Jacoby, 1994). Overview of experiments, hi all of the experiments reported here, LoP was manipulated at study and recognition memory was tested using two response-signal delays, 500 ms and 1500 ms. The goal of the experiments was to isolate familiarity in order to assess whether it was affected by the LoP manipulation. Experiment 1 used a facilitation design in which both familiarity and recollection would lead subjects to respond positively to previously presented words. To provide converging evidence that the responsesignal procedure reduced recollection, modality at study (visual/auditory) was also manipulated. Experiment 2 used an interference design in which conscious recollection was set in opposition to familiarity. As described in more detail below, interference (or opposition) paradigms provide some of the strongest evidence for the existence of automatic, unintentional influences. Experiment 3 used the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) which combines performance in facilitation and interference conditions so as to allow derivation of separate quantitative estimates of familiarity and recollection. Experiment 1 In Experiment 1, I used the response-signal technique to assess the effects of semantic and nonsemantic encoding on subsequent recognition-memory decisions. Dual-process theories assume that recollection typically requires more time than the assessment of familiarity (Juola et al., 1971). Thus, forcing subjects to respond quickly should substantially reduce conscious recollection, thereby leaving familiarity-based responding relatively isolated. Although short response signals can restrict the amount of time available for conscious recollection, it is unclear at what point recollection would be sufficiently attenuated to allow familiarity-based responding to be clearly observed. One way around this problem is to manipulate the modality in which words are studied and tested so as to obtain converging evidence for the attenuation of conscious recollection. Modality effects are often not found on explicit tests such as recognition or recall (e.g., Craik, Moscovitch, & McDowd, 1994; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Rajaram & Roediger, 1993; Roediger & Blaxton, 1987a) but are consistently observed on perceptual implicit tests (e.g., Craik et al., 1994; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Roediger & Blaxton, 1987b). A modality effect can therefore serve as a marker for the operation of automatic (familiaritybased) retrieval. The question of interest is whether semantic encoding facilitates performance more than
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nonsemantic encoding •when recognition is predominantly based on familiarity. METHOD Design and subjects
The experiment was a 2 x 2 x 3 mixed-factorial. Level of processing (semantic, nonsemantic) and response-signal delay (500 ms, 1500 ms) were manipulated between subjects. The relationship between test words and prior study experience was manipulated within subjects: All test words were presented visually and included words previously read ("visual"), heard ("auditory"), and words that had not been presented ("new"). Twenty-four subjects from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro participated in return for credit in introductory psychology courses. Subjects were tested individually. Materials and equipment Ninety-six nouns, from 4 to 7 letters in length, and ranging in frequency from 1 to 442 occurrences per million (Kucera & Francis, 1967), were used as critical stimuli. Forty-eight of those words were separated into two sets of 24 for use as study words; for both studyorientation groups (semantic and nonsemantic) the two sets were presented an equal number of times visually and aurally. The remaining 48 words were used as distractors on the recognition test. Distractors were not rotated with study words, as the main comparisons of interest involved the effect of study modality and LoP on recognition performance. Mean frequencies (Kucera & Francis, 1967) of the two study sets and the distractor set were 72.3, 72.3, and 70.5, respectively. In addition to the critical words, eight medium-frequency words were used as primacy and recency buffers at study. Except for the auditory list (see below), all stimuli were presented on a monochrome computer monitor (Amdek video-300). When reaction time was measured, subjects responded by pressing keys ("yes"/"no") on a tone generator; this triggered a Coulbourn voice switch (model S28-24) connected to a Tecmar Labtender in an IBM-XT. Procedure
The experiment was conducted in three phases; study, training with the response-signal procedure, and test. The study phase was incidental with respect to memory; subjects were told that word-ratings were being collected for normative purposes and that half of the words would be presented on the computer screen whereas the other would be read by the experimenter. Subjects in the semantic condition rated the pleasantness of the meaning of each word using a five-point scale (1 = very unpleasant, 5 = very pleasant). Subjects in the nonsemantic condition rated the difficultly of generating rhymes for each word, also using a five-point scale (1 = very easy, 5 = very difficult); they were told that, to make their judgment, they could either generate rhymes silently or make an intuitive judgment based on the sound of the word. In both study conditions, a card displaying the appropriate scale was attached below the computer screen and subjects
Toth
126 made their ratings on a numbered response sheet. Study lists were presented in an alternating fashion (visual, auditory, visual, auditory, etc.) using a different random order of words for each subject. Four primacy (2 visual and 2 auditory) and four recency (2 visual and 2 auditory) items were also presented. Visually presented words were displayed in the center of the screen for one second. Aurally presented words were read aloud by the experimenter. Subjects were allowed as much time as they needed to make their ratings; once a response had been made, the next word was provided. The second phase of the experiment was designed to give subjects practice with the response-signal procedure. Following McKoon and Ratdiff (1989), a lexical decision task was used because it requires no study experience and allows for quick training. The sequence of events for this task was as follows. A set of arrows (> > > < <
