To calculate or not to calculate: A source activation confusion model of problem familiarity's role in strategy selection

How do people decide whether to try to retrieve an answer to a problem or to compute the answer by some other means? The authors report 2 experiments showing that this decision is based on problem familiarity rather than on retrievability of some answer (correct or incorrect), even when problem familiarization occurred 24 hr earlier. These effects at the level of the individual problem solver and the results reported by L. M. Reder and F. E. Ritter (1992) are well fit with the same parameter values in a spreading-activation computational model of feeling of knowing in which decisions to retrieve or compute an answer are based on the familiarity or activation levels of the problem representation. The authors therefore argue that strategy selection is governed by a familiarity-based feeling-of-knowing process rather than by a process that uses the availability of the answer or some form of race between retrieving and computing the answer

A Mechanistic Account of the Mirror Effect for Word Frequency: A Computational Model of Remember-Know Judgments in a Continuous Recognition Paradigm

A theoretical account of the mirror effect for word frequency and of dissociations in the pattern of responding Remember vs. Know (R vs. K) for low- and high-frequency words was tested both empirically and computationally by comparing predicted with observed data theory in 3 experiments. The SAC (Source of Activation Confusion) theory of memory makes the novel prediction of more K responses for high- than for low-frequency words, for both old and new items. Two experiments used a continuous presentation and judgment paradigm that presented words up to 10 times. The computer simulation closely modeled the pattern of results, fitting new Know and Remember patterns of responding at each level of experimental presentation and for both levels of word frequency for each participant. Experiment 3 required list discrimination after each R response (Group 1) or after an R or K response (Group 2). List accuracy was better following R responses. All experiments were modeled using the same parameter values