The inferential basis of familiarity and recall: Evidence for a common underlying process

Recognition can be performed either by experiencing a feeling of familiarity for a stimulus or by recalling contextual detail of a prior episode, These bases of recognition occur under different condition.,,. are influenced by different factors. and cause different subject c reactions. The former often appears to he caused by an automatic process ispontaneous and consuming no conscious resources). the latter by a controlled process. In contrast to this dual-process vieA. we report a series of experiments demonstrating that both familiarity and recall result from a heuristic evaluation and attribution process We suggest that qualitative differences observed between the two states do not derive from a fundamental dichotomy of process, Instead. we argue that differences between familarity and recall result from difference, in the types of information on which the are based. We suggest that these states result from essentially the same processes, both involving the production of some mental event, followed by an evaluation or that experience and an attribution to a source in the past. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).