Memory-based decision making: Examining the relative influence of experimental and pre-experimental exposure

We examine the role of memory accessibility across two different memory-related judgments: episodic recognition (e.g., ”Was this person’s name presented earlier in the experiment?”) and probabilistic inference (e.g., “How famous do you consider this person to be?”). For both judgments (episodic recognition and probabilistic inference), we observe the influence of both pre-experimental exposure, which is approximated by web-frequencies (e.g., Google search results), and experimental exposure, which is manipulated through an incidental study phase (e.g., a vowel counting task). The results of these experiments allow for an integrative understanding of how different sources of memory accessibility (experimental vs. pre-experiential) are combined, and possibly interfere with one another, depending on the type of memory-related judgment.