Using recall to reduce false recognition: diagnostic and disqualifying monitoring

Whether recall of studied words (e.g., parsley, rosemary, thyme) could reduce false recognition of related lures (e.g., basil) was investigated. Subjects studied words from several categories for a final recognition memory test. Half of the subjects were given standard test instructions, and half were instructed to use recall to reduce false recognition. Manipulation checks indicated that the latter instructions did elicit a recall-to-reject strategy. However, false recognition was selectively reduced only when all the words from a category could be recalled (Experiment 1). When longer categories were used, thereby minimizing exhaustive recall, a recall-to-reject strategy was ineffective at reducing false recognition (Experiment 2). It is suggested that exhaustively recalling a category allowed subjects to disqualify the lure as having occurred, analogous to recall-to-reject demonstrations in other tasks. In contrast, partially recalling a category did not help to diagnose the lure as nonstudied. These findings constrain theories of recall-based monitoring processes.