Memory & Cognition 1990, 18 (6), 579-583 Attention and recollective experience in recognition memory
JOHN M. GARDINER City University, London, England and ALAN J. PARK IN University of Sussex, Brighton, England
The functional relation between recognition memory and conscious awareness was assessed in an experiment in which undivided attention at study was compared with two divided atten tion conditions, one more demanding than the other. When recognizing a word from the study list, subjects indicated whether they could consciously recollect its prior occurrence or recognized it on some other basis, in the absence ofconscious recollection. Divided attention at study progres sively impaired word recognition accompanied by conscious recollection. Recognition in the ab sence of conscious recollection was not affected by divided attention. These findings are inter preted as providing further support for the idea that recognition memory entails two distinct components, one based on associative and contextual information, the other based on a "trace less" awareness of familiarity.
Recognition can be defined as what happens when an only recognition accompanied by recollective experience, individual identifies a stimulus as having been encoun as measured by "remember" responses; recognition in tered previously. Conscious awareness of recognition the absence of recollective experience, as measured by seems to take at least two distinct forms. A stimulus may "know" responses, has been uninfluenced by any ofthese evoke recognition when its oecurrence brings to mind variables (Gardiner, 1988; Gardiner & Java, 1989, 1990). some specific experience in which the stimulus was previ Motivated by the striking similarity between variables ously involved. Alternatively, a stimulus may give rise that dissoeiate "remember' and "know" judgments and only to feelings of familiarity. For example, one can those that dissoeiate explicit and implicit memory phe recognize a person as being familiar without remember nomena more generally, Gardiner and Java (1990; see also ing who the person is, or without being able to recollect Gardiner, 1988) have suggested that the distinction anything about the person. between "remember" and "know" responding can be A laboratory measure of these two kinds of conscious interpreted within a theoretical framework (Hayman & awareness is provided by Tulving's (1985b) distinction Tulving, 1989) that combines Tulving's (1983, 1985a, between "remember" and "know" responses. Word 1985b) distinction between episodic memory and other recognition measured by a "remember" response indi memory systems with a proeessing account of differ cates that recognizing the word brings back to mind some ences between explicit and implicit measures of retention conscious recollection of its prior oecurrence in the study (Roediger & Blaxton, 1987; Roediger, Weidon, & Challis, list, such as an assoeiation or image it triggered, some 1989). In this framework, which is consonant with sug thing about its position or appearance, or something of gestions made by a number of other workers (Jacoby, more personal significance. Recognition measured by a 1983; Jacoby & Dallas, 1981; Mandler, 1980, 1988; "know" response indicates that recognizing the word Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988; Roediger et al., 1989; brings nothing else to mind-no assoeiation, no contex Schacter, in press; Tulving & Schacter, 1990), "remem tual information, no conscious recollection of its prior oc ber" responses reflect an episodic memory system that currence in the study list. depends largely on conceptually driven proeessing, and Previous studies that have exploited these measures of on elaborative or contextual information. "Know" re conscious awareness in recognition memory have shown sponses, in contrast, reflect some other "traceless" per that they reflect distinct components in performance. Vari ceptual memory system that is primarily data-driven. ables such as levels of proeessing, generate versus read, Gardiner and Java's (1990) hypothesis carries the clear word frequency, and retention interval have influenced implication that it should be possible to discover further paralieis between recognition performance in the absence of conscious recollection and the known properties of im ------~-~------~ --- Reprint requests should be addressed to lohn Gardiner, Memory & plicit memory performance. One additional factor that has Cognition Research Group, City University , Northampton Square, recently been shown to produce dissoeiations between im London ECIV OHB, England. plicit and explieit measures is the extent to whieh sub-
579 Copyright 1990 Psyehonomic Soeiety, Ine. 580 GARDINER AND PARKIN jects are able to allocate conscious processing resources A and B-with 36 words in each. In the learning phase, the sub du ring initialleaming. Parkin and Russo (1990) exam jects sat in front of a visual display unit interfaced with a Motorola ined irnplicit memory performance by using savings rnea M6809 microprocessor. Half of the subjects in each condition were sures in a picture-completion task. In their study, sub required to learn List A, and the other half learned List B. List items were presented individually at a rate of one every 2 sec. All subjects jects were first exposed to fragmented picture sequences, were instructed to attend to the words and try to remember them. which they were required to identify. While carrying out The subjects in the undivided attention condition studied the list this task, half the subjects were also required to perform undistracted. In the divided attention conditions, the subjects were a secondary tone-monitoring task. Savings measures in required to listen to a tape-recorded tone sequence that comprised picture completion were unaffected by secondary task per individual tones of low, medium, or high pitch. The pitch of any formance, but, on a test of free recall for the pictures given tone in the sequence was randomly determined, and the presen tation rate was quasirandom in that the time elapsing between any presented at study, the subjects in the tone-monitoring con two successive tones varied randomly between a minimum and max dition performed significantly worse. Parkin, Reid, and imum time constraint. In the first divided attention condition, the Russo (1990) carried out a sirnilar manipulation, using tones occurred at intervals varying between 6 and 9 sec. The sec a modification of the fragment-completion/recognition ond condition was achieved by doubling the speed of the tape used procedure of Tulving, Schacter, and Stark (1982). At in the first divided attention condition, thereby doubling the presen presentation, subjects performed a sentence-classification tation rate and halving the intervals between successive tones. The subjects in the divided attention conditions were required task either undistracted or while monitoring tones. Prirned to call out the pitch of each tone as it was presented ("high," word fragment completion was unaffected by tone monitor "medium," or "low"), and they were given some initial training ing, but it significantly impaired recognition performance. in this task. The subjects' responses were recorded by the ex Related results have been reported by Jacoby, Woloshyn, perimenter. Performance on tone detection was good in both divided and Kelley (1989), who showed that gains in farniliarity, attention conditions. Only 19 out of 36 subjects made any errors as measured by fame judgments of people's names from at all; 10 of these made only one error. Following list presentation, there was a IO-min retention inter a previously presented list, were not reduced by a digit val during which most subjects filled in a questionnaire about events shadowing task that greatly reduced name recognition. spanning the last 30 years. The other subjects were engaged in genial These findings are consistent with the view that, unlike conversation by the experimenter. explicit memory performance, implicit memory perfor At recognition testing, the subjects were confronted with a sin mance does not depend on the amount of conscious gle sheet comprising all 72 words used in both study lists; the words processing resource available (see also Craik, 1989; were arranged in four columns. The subjects were told to work down Parkin, 1989; Stanhope & Parkin, 1990). each column, indicating for each successive word whether or not they recognized it from the list that they had been shown earlier. Given the apparent sirnilarity between the properties of In addition, for each word recognized, the subjects were asked to explicit and implicit memory phenomena and those es place the letter R by the word to indicate that they remembered tablished for "remember" and "know" judgments, the it from the list or a K if they merely knew that the word was in present experiment was designed to test the hypothesis the list. "Remernber" and "know" responses were further ex that dividing attention at study should selectively impair plained as folIows. The subjects were instructed to make "remern recognition accompanied by recollective experience, as ber" responses to recognized words that evoked some specific recollection from the learning sequence. Examples given included measured by "remember" responses, but have little ef remembering a word because it evoked a particular association, im fect on recognition in the absence of recollective ex age, or some other more personal experience, or because some perience, as measured by "know" responses. There were thing about its appearance or position could be recalled. "Know" three study conditions, one with undivided attention, and responses were to be given for words that the subjects feit confi two with divided attention. The task chosen for dividing dent in recognizing but which failed to evoke any specific conscious attention was the tone-monitoring task used by Parkin and recollection from the learning sequence. The distinction between the two responses was also iIIustrated by two more everyday ex Russo (1990) and Parkin et al. (1990). In the second amples. The subjects were told that if asked what movie they saw divided attention task, the tones occurred at twice the rate last, they would most probably "remernber" because aspects of used in the first condition, thus further reducing the that experience would come back to mind; they were told that a amount of conscious processing resource available. "know" response was like recognizing someone in the street but not remembering who the person was, or being able to recollect METHOD anything at all about them. When subjects had completed the recog nition phase, they were interviewed and asked to explain at least Subjects two oftheir "remember" judgments and two oftheir "know" judg The subjects were 54 members of the Laboratory of Experimen ments. This enabled the experimenter to establish whether the sub tal Psychology subject panel at Sussex University; most of them jects had used the two types of response correctly. were graduate students or technical and secretarial staff. They were allocated arbitrarily to one of three groups with 18 subjects in each. RESULTS They were tested individually and were paid for their help. Three subjects were subsequently replaced, for apparently having failed The principal results of the experiment are shown to understand or act upon the recognition instructions. in Figure 1. The figure indicates that divided attention conditions progressively impaired the level of correct Design and Procedure Seventy-two target words were selected from the materials used "remember" responses but had no effect on the level of by Tulving et al. (1982). These were divided into two study lists- correct "know" responses. Separate analyses ofvariance ATTENTION AND RECOLLECTION 581
'0r------, influenced by divided attention (Craik, 1989; Jacoby, 9 Undrvided >. attention Woloshyn, & Kelley, 1989; Stanhope & Parkin, 1990). +' ·8 Conversely, the finding that "know" responses were not .Q tJ 7 .Q influenced by reductions in the amount of conscious o 6 r;;a "Remember" L
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