HOW DO INDIVIDUALS REMEMBER THEIR PAST STATEMENTS

It was hypothesized that when it is difficult for people to remember what they said previously, they may use their sense of familiarity with a statement to determine whether it is one they expressed. In 3 experiments, Ss were asked to state whether they had witnessed certain objects in a previous slide presentation; they responded aloud with experimentally mandated statements. The familiarity of target statements was varied, independent of whether they were expressed, through extraneous presentations of the pertinent objects. Later, Ss tried to determine whether (Experiments 1 and 2), or how frequently (Experiment 3), they expressed the target statements. Results supported the hypothesis: Ss were more likely to remember making statements concerning the more familiar objects than the less familiar objects.