Judgments of frequency and recency: how they relate to reports of subjective awareness

In 2 experiments, the author explored the relations of remember versus familiar ratings to judgments of frequency (JOFs) and to judgments of recency (JORs). In both cases, remembered items were associated with more accurate memory judgments. In general, familiar items were judged to have occurred less frequently and less recently than remembered items. However, JOFs and JORs associated with familiar items were more accurate than chance. Implications for theories of remember versus familiar ratings, JOFs, and JORs are considered. Some basic findings that constrain these theories are that (a) remember versus familiar ratings were less sensitive than JOF to presentation frequency and less sensitive than JOR to recency and (b) although remember versus familiar ratings are strongly related to both JOF and JOR, as measured by gamma, the relations are far from perfect.