title: Sum-difference theory of remembering and knowing: a two-dimensional signal-detection model.
abstract: In the remember-know paradigm for studying recognition memory, participants distinguish items whose presentations are episodically remembered from those that are merely familiar. A one-dimensional model postulates that remember responses are just high-confidence old judgments, but a meta-analysis of 373 experiments shows that the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves predicted by this model have the wrong slope. According to the new sum-difference Theory of remembering and knowing (STREAK), old items differ from new ones in both global and specific memory strength: The old-new judgment is based on a weighted sum of these dimensions, and the remember- know judgment is based on a weighted difference. STREAK accounts for the form of several novel kinds of ROC curves and for existing remember-know and item-recognition data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003-7710, USA. caren@psych.umass.edu
authors.forename: Caren M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Rotello
authors.forename: Neil A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Macmillan
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Reeder
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012372:ROC Curve; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological