Discrete-state versus continuous models of the confidence-accuracy relationship in recognition memory
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BRIEF REPORT
Discrete-state versus continuous models of the confidence-accuracy relationship in recognition memory Christophe G. Delay 1 & John T. Wixted 1 Accepted: 13 October 2020 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract The relationship between confidence and accuracy in recognition memory is important in real-world settings (e.g., eyewitness identification) and is also important to understand at a theoretical level. Signal detection theory assumes that recognition decisions are based on continuous underlying memory signals and therefore inherently predicts that the relationship between confidence and accuracy will be continuous. Almost invariably, the empirical data accord with this prediction. Threshold models instead assume that recognition decisions are based on discrete-state memory signals. As a result, these models do not inherently predict a continuous confidence-accuracy relationship. However, they can accommodate that result by adding hypothetical mapping relationships between discrete states and the confidence rating scale. These mapping relationships are thought to arise from a variety of factors, including demand characteristics (e.g., instructing participants to distribute their responses across the confidence scale). However, until such possibilities are experimentally investigated in the context of a recognition memory experiment, there is no sense in which threshold models adequately explain confidence ratings at a theoretical level. Here, we tested whether demand characteristics might account for the mapping relationships required by threshold models and found that confidence was continuously related to accuracy (almost identically so) both in the presence of strong experimenter demands and in their absence. We conclude that confidence ratings likely reflect the strength of a continuous underlying memory signal, not an attempt to use the confidence scale in a manner that accords with the perceived expectations of the experimenter. Keywords Recognition memory . Signal detection theory . Threshold theory
Introduction The relationship between confidence and accuracy is important to understand at a theoretical level. For example, in the field of eyewitness identification, it was long believed that confidence in a positive identification was largely unrelated to its accuracy (Sporer, Penrod, Read, & Cutler 1995; Wells & Murray, 1984). The implication was that judges and jurors should disregard confidence and instead concentrate on the fact that eyewitness memory is fallible. Courts across the USA accepted that
* John T. Wixted [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA
science-based recommendation, and some presumably still do.1 However, in recent years, it has become clear that on an initial test of memory from a lineup (early in a police investigation), confidence is in fact highly predictive of accuracy (Wixted & Wells, 2017). In other words, the higher the confidence, the more accurate the identification. The same is true of memory for a
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