Comparison of RK and confidence judgement ROCs in recognition memory

Several indicators have been used to differentiate familiarity and recollection processes. One dualist theory stipulates that it is possible to decide whether memories come from a feeling of knowing or from a conscious retrieval of the encoding and storage conditions (remembering). Another dualist theory is based on an indirect estimation of familiarity and recollection via the subjective confidence associated with recognition responses, and from an analysis of the derived receiver operating characteristics (ROC). In the present study, participants were presented with target words or faces that they subsequently had to recognise among distractor words or faces. On the recognition phase, the old items were the same size or a different size. In two different conditions, participants had to report (1) their remember/know/guess judgement or (2) their confidence level for each of their recognition responses. The main goal of the experiment was to directly compare different indicators of familiarity and recollection. The results showed that it would be risky to consider the remember/know/guess method and the confidencejudgement method as strictly equivalent.