On interpreting the relationship between remember-know judgments and confidence: the role of instructions.
Two experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the nature of the remember-know instructions given to participants influences whether these responses reflect different memory states or different degrees of memory confidence. Participants studied words and nonwords, a variable that has been shown to dissociate confidence from remember-know judgments and were given a set of published remember-know instructions that either emphasized know judgments as highly confident (Experiment 1) or as less confident (Experiment 2) states of recognition. Experiment 1 replicated the standard finding showing that remembering and knowing were differently influenced by the word-nonword variable, whereas confidence responses were not. By contrast, Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of data for remember-know and sure-unsure responses, thus demonstrating the importance of the instructions for interpreting the relationship between remembering and knowing and confidence.
Geraci
Lisa
L
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, 4235 TAMU, TX 77845-4235, USA. lgeraci@tamu.edu
McCabe
David P
DP
Guillory
Jimmeka J
JJ
D001364:Awareness; D003469:Culture; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D011939:Mental Recall; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning