It is often assumed that recollection is necessary to support memory for novel associations, whereas familiarity supports memory for single items. However, the levels of unitization framework assumes that familiarity can support associative memory under conditions in which the components of an association are unitized (i.e., treated as a single…

The pseudoword effect is the finding that pseudowords (i.e., pronounceable nonwords) tend to give rise to more hits and false alarms than words. The familiarity-based account attributes this effect to the fact that pseudowords lack distinctive semantic meanings, which increases the inter-item similarity of pseudowords compared to words and…

Whether recollection is a threshold or signal detection process is highly controversial, and the controversy has centered in part on the shape of receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) and z-transformed ROCs (zROCs). U-shaped zROCs observed in tests thought to rely heavily on recollection, such as source memory tests, have provided evidence in…

Receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) have been used extensively to study the processes underlying human recognition memory, and this method has recently been applied in studies of rats. However, the extent to which the results from human and animal studies converge is neither entirely clear, nor is it known how the different methods used to…

It is well established that the memory strength of studied items is more variable than the strength of new items on tests of recognition memory, but the reason why this occurs is poorly understood. One account for this old "item variance effect" is based on single-process theory, which proposes that this effect is due to variability in how well…

Emotion has been suggested to slow forgetting via a mechanism that enhances memory consolidation. Here, we investigate whether this time dependent process influences the subjective experience of recollection as well as the ability to retrieve specific contextual details of the study event. To do so we examined recognition for emotional and neutral…

The authors assess whether the complementary learning systems model of the medial temporal lobes (Norman & O'Reilly, 2003) is able to account for source recognition receiver operating characteristics (ROCs). The model assumes that recognition reflects the contribution of a hippocampally mediated recollection process and a cortically mediated…

The dual-process signal-detection (DPSD) model assumes that recognition memory is based on recollection of qualitative information or on a signal-detection-based familiarity process. The model has proven useful for understanding results from a wide range of memory research, including behavioral, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and…

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is being used increasingly to examine the memory processes underlying recognition memory. The authors discuss the methodological issues involved in conducting and analyzing ROC results, describe the various models that have been developed to account for these results, review the behavioral empirical…