Criterion shifts change the pattern of output interference

Output interference in recognition refers to a decrease in performance over the course of a test. The goal of the current study was to determine whether experimentally shifting the decision criterion changes the form of output interference and to identify a process account of any interaction. In two experiments, we manipulated the decision criterion via changes in the base rate of the old items at test (80%, 50%, 20%). Experiment 1 implemented this manipulation within-subjects and failed to induce criterion shifts. In contrast, when the base rate was manipulated between-subjects in Experiment 2, decision criteria differed across conditions. Qualitative patterns suggested that liberal criteria attenuated the hit rate (HR) decline and increased the false alarm rate (FAR) across blocks, whereas conservative criteria yielded steeper HR declines with relatively stable FAR. To further examine this effect, Experiment 3 employed longer test lists and a larger sample. The criterion was manipulated only via prior information about the base rates, while the actual base rate was 50% in all conditions. Experiment 3 revealed a significant interaction between response bias and output interference in HR and FAR. When we used an independent data set (Layher et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(11), 2075-2105, 2020), we demonstrated the same patterns. To account for these findings, we conducted simulations with the Retrieving Effectively from Memory (Shiffrin & Steyvers, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4(2), 145-166, 1997) model. The results were best captured by a learning-during-test mechanism in which every test item is encoded as a new memory trace.