Item repetition and response deadline affect familiarity and recollection differently across childhood

ABSTRACT

The aim was to examine how item repetition at encoding and response deadline at retrieval affect familiarity and recollection in 5-, 7-, or 11-year-old children (N = 156). Familiarity and recollection were estimated using a process dissociation paradigm. Direct comparison of the effects of repetition under unlimited and limited response time revealed a dissociation of familiarity and recollection. The recollection was both boosted (via repetition) and reduced (via a response time limit). The familiarity was unaffected by a response time limit. Moreover, repetition boosted familiarity only under unlimited response time. Together with several distinct age-related increases for recollection and familiarity, these results provide a challenge to single-process accounts of recognition memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual-process theory
• recollection
• familiarity
• item repetition
• memory development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 When base rates to new items were taken into account by using the dual-process signal detection model to estimate R and F (Yonelinas et al., 1995) the same main results were obtained and so we do not discuss this further.