Recognition without awareness: Encoding and retrieval factors.

The article reports 4 experiments that explore the notion of recognition without awareness using words as the material. Previous work by Voss and associates has shown that complex visual patterns were correctly selected as targets in a 2-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) recognition test although participants reported that they were guessing. The present experiments sought to extend this earlier work by having participants study words in different ways and then attempt to recognize the words later in a series of 4-alternative forced-choice (4-AFC) tests, some of which contained no target word.

Divided attention improves delayed, but not immediate retrieval of a consolidated memory.

A well-documented dissociation between memory encoding and retrieval concerns the role of attention in the two processes. The typical finding is that divided attention (DA) during encoding impairs future memory, but retrieval is relatively robust to attentional manipulations. However, memory research in the past 20 years had demonstrated that retrieval is a memory-changing process, in which the strength and availability of information are modified by various characteristics of the retrieval process.

Production benefits both recollection and familiarity.

In three experiments, we investigated the roles of recollection and familiarity in the production effect--the finding that words read aloud are remembered better than words read silently. Experiment 1, using the remember/know procedure, and Experiment 2, using the receiver operating characteristic procedure, converged in demonstrating that production enhanced both recollection and familiarity. Experiment 3 supported the role of recollection by demonstrating that specific episodic information--that is, whether a word had been studied aloud or silently--was stronger for items studied aloud.

A double dissociation of implicit and explicit memory in younger and older adults.

This study examined whether age-related differences in cognition influence later memory for irrelevant, or distracting, information. In Experiments 1 and 2, older adults had greater implicit memory for irrelevant information than younger adults did. When explicit memory was assessed, however, the pattern of results reversed: Younger adults performed better than older adults on an explicit memory test for the previously irrelevant information, and older adults performed less well than they had on the implicit test.

Destination memory impairment in older people.

Older adults are assumed to have poor destination memory-knowing to whom they tell particular information-and anecdotes about them repeating stories to the same people are cited as informal evidence for this claim. Experiment 1 assessed young and older adults' destination memory by having participants tell facts (e.g.

The production effect: delineation of a phenomenon.

In 8 recognition experiments, we investigated the production effect-the fact that producing a word aloud during study, relative to simply reading a word silently, improves explicit memory. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 showed the effect to be restricted to within-subject, mixed-list designs in which some individual words are spoken aloud at study. Because the effect was not evident when the same repeated manual or vocal overt response was made to some words (Experiment 4), producing a subset of studied words appears to provide additional unique and discriminative information for those words-they become distinctive.

Recollection and familiarity for public events in neurologically intact older adults and two brain-damaged patients.

Despite extensive investigations of the role of recollection and familiarity on laboratory-acquired memories, there is a dearth of such research on memories formed in real life settings. We used the Remember/Know paradigm to investigate the relative contribution of recollection and familiarity processes to memory of public historical events reported in the media across the life span of two groups of neurologically intact older adults (old-old: 74-85, young-old: 58-69) and on two patients with brain damage. First, in neurologically intact participants, recollection rates decreased as a function of time elapsed since the event occurred, at a significantly higher rate than the corresponding decrease in familiarity or global memory.

Destination memory: stop me if I've told you this before.

Everyone has recounted a story or joke to someone only to experience a nagging feeling that they may already have told this person this information. Remembering to whom one has told what, an ability that we term destination memory, has been overlooked by researchers despite its important social ramifications. Using a novel paradigm, we demonstrate that destination memory is more fallible than source memory--remembering the person from whom one has received information (Experiment 1).