Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 8, 2026
08:12
A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments
Published on: March 1, 2022
Relating the content and confidence of recognition judgments
Diana Selmeczy1, Ian G Dobbins1
1Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis.
Summary
Participants
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- The Remember/Know procedure distinguishes episodic and semantic retrieval.
- Research has largely simplified recognition content dichotomously.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate recognition content beyond the Remember/Know dichotomy.
- To analyze participants' spontaneous justifications for recognition decisions.
Main Methods:
- Collected written justifications for old/new recognition decisions with confidence ratings.
- Employed word frequency analysis (unigrams, bigrams, trigrams), independent ratings, and Support Vector Machine (SVM) machine learning.
- Did not pre-define Remembering or Knowing for participants.
Main Results:
- Linguistic content of high/medium confidence recognition differs, aligning with dual process theories.
- High confidence recognition associated with "I remember" and temporal/perceptual details.
- Absence of remembering for distinctive items supported high confidence "new" reports.
- SVM classification performance matched dual process signal detection models.
Conclusions:
- Participants actively use the presence or absence of remembering for high confidence recognition judgments.
- Findings support dual process theories of recognition over single process models.
More Related Videos
07:26The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory
Published on: January 31, 2017
07:34Perceptual and Category Processing of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis' Dimension of Human Likeness: Some Methodological Issues
Published on: June 3, 2013
Related Concept Videos
01:24Confidence Coefficient
The confidence coefficient is also known as the confidence level or degree of confidence. It is the percent expression for the probability, 1-α, that the confidence interval contains the true population parameter assuming that the confidence interval is obtained after sufficient unbiased sampling; for example, if the CL = 90%, then in 90 out of 100 samples the interval estimate will enclose the true population parameter. Here α is the area under the curve, distributed equally under both the...
01:29Reliability and Validity
Reliability and validity are two important considerations that must be made with any type of data collection. Reliability refers to the ability to consistently produce a given result. In the context of psychological research, this would mean that any instruments or tools used to collect data do so in consistent, reproducible ways.
02:13The Representativeness Heuristic
The representative heuristic describes a biased way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something. For example, you may assume that your professors spend their free time reading books and engaging in intellectual conversation, because the idea of them spending their time playing volleyball or visiting an amusement park does not fit in with your stereotypes of professors.
01:19Interpretation of Confidence Intervals
A confidence interval is a better estimate of the population than a point estimate, as it uses a range of values from a sample instead of a single value.
Confidence intervals have confidence coefficients that are crucial for their interpretation. The most common confidence coefficients are 0.90, 0.95, and 0.99, which can be written as percentages–90%, 95%, and 99%, respectively.
Suppose a person calculates a confidence interval with a confidence coefficient of 0.95. In that case, they can...
Confidence intervals have confidence coefficients that are crucial for their interpretation. The most common confidence coefficients are 0.90, 0.95, and 0.99, which can be written as percentages–90%, 95%, and 99%, respectively.
Suppose a person calculates a confidence interval with a confidence coefficient of 0.95. In that case, they can...
01:53Cause and Effect
While variables are sometimes correlated because one does cause the other, it could also be that some other factor, a confounding variable, is actually causing the systematic movement in our variables of interest. For instance, as sales in ice cream increase, so does the overall rate of crime. Is it possible that indulging in your favorite flavor of ice cream could send you on a crime spree? Or, after committing crime do you think you might decide to treat yourself to a cone?
02:45Self-Discrepancy Theory
One influential perspective on what motivates people's behavior is detailed in Tory Higgin's self-discrepancy theory (Higgins, 1987). He proposed that people hold disagreeing internal representations of themselves that lead to different emotional states.