Category repetition and false recognition: Effects of instance frequency and category size

Three experiments investigated the basis of false recognition errors caused by category repetition. The subjective nature of the false alarms was measured by asking participants to make "remember-know" decisions to each item they judged as "old." Experiment 1 replicated the finding by Dewhurst and Anderson (1999) that false remember responses to nonstudied category members increased with the number of items from the same category that were presented at encoding. Participants in Experiment 2 made more false remember responses to category members of high instance frequency than to members of low instance frequency. Participants in Experiment 3 made more false remember responses to members of small categories than to members of large categories. These findings support the view that the false positive remember responses result from associative responses made to items presented at encoding. (C) 2001 Academic Press.