Recognition memory with little or no remembering: Implications for a detection model

Remembering and knowing are two states of awareness that reflect autonoetic and noetic consciousness. Recent extensions of signal detection theory have attempted to fit remember and know responses, which measure these states of awareness, to a continuum of trace strength or familiarity. The model assumes there are two response criteria, a remembering criterion, which is more strict, and a recognition criterion, which is more lenient and leads to any positive recognition response. The most important. prediction of this model is that bias-free estimates of memory should be the same whether derived from overall hit and false alarm rates or from remember hit and false alarm rates. We describe evidence that disconfirms this prediction and discuss other findings that the model cannot accommodate.