Image database studies 1 and 2

Abstract

Remembering is an important but potentially unreliable cue influencing both confidence and accuracy, however, high confidence remembering is believed to be reliably associated with high recognition accuracy. We assessed these beliefs using memory for colour natural scene photographs in two separate studies, a 2-alternative forced-choice recognition memory task based on the picture similarity paradigm, and a source memory task with continuous measures of retrieval, finding that confidence in recognition accuracy was influenced more by the experience of remembering than by its factual accuracy. Calibration plots demonstrated high confidence recognition was associated with high accuracy only when perceptually or mnemonically similar test-pairs were presented. While there was no relationship between accuracy and confidence in the absence of remembering when using perceptually similar test-pairs (lures), when using mnemonically similar lures, an association between high accuracy and high confidence was also seen in the absence of remembering. Our findings offer a novel explanation for the dissociation between accuracy and confidence in the picture similarity task [speculated due to confidently recollecting (misremembering) a similar picture stored in memory]. Memory quality was strongly associated with confidence in both studies. Remembering moderated the association between accuracy and confidence, differentially influencing the factual accuracy of recognition and confidence in its accuracy, such that high confidence remembering may not in all cases reliably imply high recognition accuracy. Remembered vividness of an associated cue image inflated confidence more than source memory accuracy. Highly vivid memories, confidently recollected, may not always denote their factual accuracy.All images used in the studies are iprovidedn the image database