RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Recollection and Familiarity Make Independent Contributions to Memory Judgments
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 7253
OP 7257
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6396-11.2012
VO 32
IS 21
A1 Evans, Lisa H.
A1 Wilding, Edward L.
YR 2012
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/21/7253.abstract
AB Recognition memory can be supported by the processes of recollection and familiarity. Recollection is recovery of qualitative information about a prior event. Familiarity is a scalar strength signal that permits judgments of prior occurrence. There is vigorous debate about how these processes are conceptualized, how they contribute to memory judgments, and which brain regions support them. One popular method for investigating these questions is the Remember/Know procedure, where subjects give a Remember response to studied stimuli for which they can recover contextual details of the study encounter, and a Know response when details are not recovered but subjects nevertheless believe that a stimulus was studied. According to one model, Remember responses are strong memories that are typically associated with relatively high levels of recollection and familiarity. Know responses are weaker memories and are typically associated with lower levels of both processes. Data inconsistent with this account were obtained in this experiment, where magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measures of neural activity were acquired in the test phase of a verbal memory task where healthy human volunteers made Remember, Know, or New judgments to studied and unstudied words. An MEG index of the process of recollection was larger for Remember than Know judgments, whereas the reverse was true for a MEG index of familiarity. Critically, this result is predicted by a model where recollection and familiarity make independent contributions to Remember and Know judgments, and provides a powerful constraint when mapping memory processes onto their neural substrates.