Memory error speed predicts subsequent accuracy for recognition misses but not false alarms

The current study aims to test whether faster recognition memory errors tend to result from stronger misleading retrieval, making them harder to correct in subsequent decisions than slower errors, and whether this pattern holds for both miss and false-alarm errors. We used a paradigm in which each single-item Old/New recognition decision was followed by a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) test between a target and a lure. Each 2AFC trial had one item that had just been tested for an Old/New judgment and one item that had not been previously tested. Across 183 participants, the RTs for single-item recognition errors were used to predict accuracy in the 2AFC test using a hierarchical logistic regression model. The results showed a relationship between error RT and subsequent 2AFC accuracy that was qualified by an interaction with error type. Slower miss responses were more likely to be corrected than faster misses, but no accuracy differences were observed between slower and faster false alarms. The implications of these findings are discussed as they relate to assumptions about memory processes underlying inaccurate retrieval, using the diffusion model and the two-high-threshold model as examples of accounts that explain errors in terms of misleading retrieval and failed retrieval, respectively.