Feeling of Knowing in Episodic Memory

Feeling of knowing judgments can be viewed as one mode of expressing knowledge of stored information. The present experiments explored the relation of the feeling of knowing to two other modes of expressing knowledge, recall and recognition, by examining how manipulations of encoding, storage, and retrieval conditions affected the relative frequency of positive and negative feeling of knowing judgments and feeling of knowing accuracy. Relative frequency of positive and negative feeling of knowing judgments, like recall and recognition, was influenced by experimentally induced changes in encoding, storage, and retrieval conditions. In contrast, feeling of knowing accuracy was not sensitive to changes in encoding and storage conditions but was affected by changes in retrieval conditions. The results are discussed with regard to methodological and theoretical issues raised by the present experiments that bear on feeling of knowing research in general.