PSY 368 Human Memory

Memory
Recognition cont.
 Experiment 2

• Signal Detection (Download details from BB)

• Like last time, find 3 participants
• You’ll need index cards for the words (write one word per card)
• Read instructions to participants, the IV is manipulated with different
instructions for each condition, so make sure that you read the correct
instructions. You’ll need to print out 3 copies of the “memory test” (1
for each participant)
• Fill out the datasheet and bring it to class on Monday (March 5 th, date
in assignment is old Fall date). I will compile data for whole class and
bring it on Wednesday March 7th
• Reports will be due the Wednesday after Spring Break (March 21 st),
 Experiment 1 results
• Overall (N = 18) • General report comments
• Immediate 7.6 items • Don’t identify your participants
• Delayed 6.0 • Stick to APA style as much as you can
• Distraction 3.5 • Include your datasheet

Primacy effect in all Recency effect

three conditions strongest in immediate
condition
 How does Recognition work?
• Two classes of theories
• Single process theories - retrieval is one process
regardless of task
• Tagging Model (Yntema & Trask, 1963)
• Strength Theory (Wickelgren & Norman, 1966)
• Dual process theories - two processes needed for
retrieval - can be task dependent
• Generate-recognize model (G-R)
• e.g., Anderson & Bower (1972)’s HAM
• Remember/Know processes model (R/K)
 Dual-process theories
Generate-recognize model (G-R)
• Recall is made up of two processes
• First, generate a set of plausible candidates for recall (Generation
stage)
• Second, confirm whether each word is worthy of being recalled
(Recognition stage – not the same as the recognition test)
• Recognition is made up of only one process
• Because the experimenter provides a candidate, recognition does not
need the generation stage
 Dual-process theories
Remember versus Know Process Model
(Tulving, 1985; Gardiner, 1988)
Relatively recent change in recognition methodology
When you recognize something, do you:
 Specifically remember (linked to Episodic memory)
 Conscious recollection of the information’s occurrence at study
 Just somehow know (linked to Semantic memory)
 Knowing that it was on the list, but not having the conscious
recollection, just a “feeling of knowing”
 Dual-process theories
Remember versus Know Process Model
Tulving (1985)
 Present subjects with 27 category-member pairs (FRUIT– pear)
 Recall tests: Prob(remember)
 Free recall test 0.88
 Cued recall test (category) FRUIT 0.75
 Cued recall test (category + first letter of target) FRUIT- p 0.48
 Results
 The proportion of remember judgments decreased over the three
kinds of tests
 Dual-process theories
Remember versus Know Process Model
Gardiner et al (1990, 1991, 1993)
• Remember/Know processes
• Make R/K judgment for “Old” items
• Remember = consciously recollect details of the item’s presentation
• Know = sure an item was presented, but can’t recall any of the details of
presentation
• R/K differ by:

Picture superiority effect Word frequency effect Generation effect

• R: P > W • R: L > H • R: G > R
• K: W > P • K: H = L • K: R = G
 Remember Versus Know
Remember versus Know Process Model
Gardiner et al (1990, 1991, 1993) gives an explanation:
 Remember judgments are influenced by conceptual and
attentional factors
 Know judgments are based on a procedural memory system
 This is similar to a distinction between explicit and implicit
memory (more on this next week)
 Techniques used to distinguish
dual processes
• Signal Detection Theory
• A technique for separating discrimination (“true”
detection) from response bias

• Process Dissociation (next week)

• A technique for separating intentional (effortful) retrieval
processes from incidental (automatic) retrieval processes
• May want to go back and review pages 111-114
 Signal Detection Theory
• Signal Detection Theory:
• A model for explaining
recognition memory
• Based on auditory perception
experiments:

Volume
• Typical Task:
Background Noise
• Ask participants to detect a
faint tone (signal) presented Hard-to-Detect Easy-to-Detect
against a background of noise Signal Signal

• The tone’s loudness against

the background noise is
manipulated
 Signal Detection Theory
• Brief History
• In World War II radar waves were used to detect enemy aircraft.
• The soldiers had to determine if the little spots of light are enemies, or
simple noise (I.e. birds).
• There was no clearly defined criteria for making these kinds of decisions.
SIGNAL: Are the spots on
the screen enemies?
• Consequences: yes no

• If an enemy went undetected, False

DECISION: Hit
people could be killed. yes
Should you alarm
• If noise was interpreted as an scramble the
enemy, time and money would be jets? Correct
lost and people would be put in no Miss
reject
harm’s way
 Signal Detection Theory
• Response bias is based on a participant’s preference for a
particular outcome.
• Preferences are based on costs & rewards

• For example,
• People will die because I SIGNAL: Are the spots on
the screen enemies?
failed to detect enemy, yes no
that is a very high cost.
• If congress yells at me for DECISION: False
yes Hit
Should you alarm
spending money, that is scramble the
not a very high cost. jets? Correct
no Miss
reject
 Signal Detection Theory
• Criterion level (C or β) is set based on outcome preferences.

• Criterion level: The intensity at which a signal will be reported

as being present (Not the intensity at which it is perceived).

SIGNAL: Are the spots on

the screen enemies?
• High Criterion: less hits yes no
but also less false alarms
DECISION: False
Hit
• Low criterion: more hits Should you
yes
alarm
scramble the
but also more false jets? Correct
alarms no Miss
reject
 Signal Detection Theory
• Criterion level (C or β) is set based on outcome preferences.

• Criterion level: The intensity at which a signal will be reported

as being present (Not the intensity at which it is perceived).

No - Criterion + Call for

alert jets
• High Criterion: less hits
but also less false alarms probability
• Low criterion: more hits Signal
but also more false Noise (enemy)
alarms
stimulus intensity
 Signal Detection Theory
• d’ (“Dee-prime”) = Discriminability
• The difference between the means Low d’

• If d’ is low, then this means there is

probability
low discriminability.
• The noise and stimulus are highly Signal
Noise
overlapping. (enemy)

• d’ = 0: pure chance
stimulus intensity
high d’
• If d’ is high, then this means there is
high discriminability.

probability
• d’ = 1: moderate performance
• d’ = 4.65: “optimal” (corresponds to Signal
Noise (enemy)
hit rate=0.99, false alarm rate=0.01)

stimulus intensity
 Signal Detection Theory
• Recognition accuracy depends on:
• Whether a signal (noise/target memory) was actually
presented
• The participant’s response

• Thus, there are four possible outcomes:

CORRECT

• Hits
• Correctly reporting the presence of the signal
• Correct Rejections
• Correctly reporting the absence of the signal

• False Alarms
INCORRECT

• Incorrectly reporting presence of the signal when it did

not occur
• Misses
• Failing to report the presence of the signal when it
occurred
 Signal Detection Theory
• Assumptions:
• Memory traces have strength
values (i.e. activation levels)
• Activation levels dictate how
“ familiar” a stimulus feels
• Traces vary in terms of their
familiarity, based on:
• Attention paid to the stimulus
during encoding
• The number of repetitions
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• Familiarity values for “ old”
and “ new” items are each
normally distributed
• On average, “ new” items are
less familiar than “ old” items
• However, some distractors are
quite familiar because they
appear often in other contexts or
are similar to “ old” items
• Thus, there can be overlap
between the distributions
• Items that surpass a threshold (i.e.
response criterion) of familiarity
are judged “ old”
 Signal Detection Theory

• Everything more familiar than (to the • Above, the same distribution with the focus on the
right of) the response criterion (beta or lure distribution to highlight:
β) will be judged “ old” • Correct rejections (in green)
• A centrally placed β is unbiased • False alarms (in red)

• Everything less familiar (i.e. to the left • D prime (d’) represents:

of β) will be judged “ new.”
• The distance between the distributions
• Hits (in green)
• The participant’s ability to discriminate the two
• Misses (in red) 19 distributions
Signal Detection Theory
• A more liberal guesser will:
• Have a response criterion shifted to the
left
• Accept more targets as “ old” (i.e. hits)
• Accept more lures as “ old” (i.e. false
alarms)

• A more conservative guesser will:

• Shift β to the right
• Have fewer hits
• Have fewer false alarms

• Thus, the overlap in the

distribution leads to:
• Trade offs between hits and false alarms
• Depends on the placement of the
response criterion

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 Signal Detection Theory
• Calculating d’ and C (or β)
• Discriminability (d’):
• Step 1) Look up the z-score for the average Hit and False Alarm rates.
• Step 2) Apply the formula d’ = zHIT – zFA, where zFA is the z-score for FAs and
zHIT is the z-score for Hits.
• Criteria C (or β):
• Take the negative of the average of zHIT and zFA. This is the criterion value C.
• Remember that positive C values indicate a conservative response bias,
while negative C values indicate a liberal response bias.

• We will go over this in class again next week when we have our data for
Experiment 2
http://memory.psych.mun.ca/models/dprime/

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 Face Recognition
• Special recognition ability
 Face Recognition
• Evidence for special ability:
(1) Prosopagnosia
• The inability to recognize previously seen faces, with relative
sparing of other perceptual, cognitive and memory functions.
• Intact ability to identify people using nonfacial features (voice)
• Due to brain injury (typically to the right temporal lobe)
• Broad Subtypes:
1. Apperceptive - failure to generate a sufficiently accurate percept to allow
a successful match to stores of previously seen faces.
2. Associative - accurate percept, but failure to match because of loss of
facial memory stores or disconnection from them.
 Face Recognition
• Evidence for special ability:
(2) Newborn preferences
• Studies done by Fantz (1961, 1963) - had kids look at three kinds of figures

50
45
40

Looking Time (secs)

35
30 Face
25 Mixed Face
• Morton and Johnson (1991) report that 20
new-born babies will preferentially view Simple
15
faces 10
5
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Age (months)
 Face Recognition
• Evidence for special ability:
(3) Face inversion effect
• Yin (1969) found that whilst
people are generally better at
recognising upright faces than
they are other objects. They are
worse for inverted faces than
they are for other inverted
objects.

• This suggests that the processing underlying normal face

recognition is different from those underlying object
recognition.
The ‘Thatcher Illusion’
(Thomson, 1980)

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The ‘Thatcher Illusion’
(Thomson, 1980)

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 Why does the ‘Thatcher
illusion’ occur?
• Bartlett and Searcy (1993) conducted experiments to measure
face ‘grotesqueness’.
• Their results supported the “configural processing
hypothesis”
• i.e. We have a difficulty in understanding the configuration of
features when faces are inverted.
• We aren’t aware of the odd configuration of elements within the
inverted Thatcher image.

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 Face Recognition
• Evidence for special ability:
(4) Pop-out effect for faces (Herschler & Hochstein, 2005)
Find the human face in the display as fast as you can. Ready?
 Face Recognition

Find the human face in the display as fast as you can. Ready?
 Face Recognition
• Evidence for special ability:
(4) Pop-out effect for faces (Herschler & Hochstein, 2005)
Now find the animal face. Ready?
Face Recognition
 Summary
(1) Recognition is an explicit memory test.
(2) Single- and dual-process theories of recognition
(3) Single-process can’t account for differences
across recall and recognition
(4) G-R theory can’t account for items that are
recalled, but not recognized
(5) Face recognition seems to be a special ability
 The Mirror Effect

• Observed when “ The type of stimulus that is accurately

recognized as old when old is also accurately
recognized as new when new. The type that is poorly
recognized as old when old is also poorly recognized as
new when new.” (Glanzer & Adams, 1985, p.8)
• Pervasive in recognition tests
• High/low word frequency and hit/false alarm rates,
presentation rate, age of subject, ...
The Mirror Effect - Example
The Mirror Effect and the Word Frequency Effect
Word Frequency
High Low
Hits 27.84 31.00
False Alarms 10.20 7.63
Source: Human Memory, p. 214
 The Mirror Effect

• Significance: It eliminates all theories of recognition

based on a unidimensional conception of strength or
familiarity (single process models)
• May be able to be explained by dual process models
• Explanations for the mirror effect are still being formed
 Dual-process theories
Dissociating Recollection and Familiarity
• Process Dissociation Procedure (Jacoby, 1991)
• Task:
• Participants study two sets of items in different contexts
• Two different recognition tests follow:
• Inclusion Condition:
• Say “ yes” if they recognize an item from either context
• Correct recognition = Recollection + Familiarity
• Exclusion Condition:
• Say “ yes” only if they recognize an item from one of the two
contexts
• Familiarity = False alarms in exclusion condition
• Recollection = Inclusion’s correct recognition minus Familiarity