Patterns of confidence loss in the cued recall of normal people with attenuated recognition memory: their relevance to a similar amnesic phenomenon.

Amnesics show relatively good cued recall (but very poor recognition memory) yet display little confidence in the accuracy of their cued recall responses. In the two studies reported here a similar pattern of results was found in normal subjects who were either tested after a long retention interval or after being given inadequate time to learn target words, i.e. cued recall was relatively unaffected whereas both yes/no recognition of words and confidence in cued recall were much impaired. The finding of equivalent impairment in recognition and confidence in cued recall suggests that these forms of memory are mediated by common memory mechanisms. These mechanisms must be impaired in amnesics and, in normal subjects, are very sensitive to delay and learning exposure manipulations. In contrast, cued recall depends largely on a different form of memory spared in amnesics, and which in normal subjects is less susceptible than recognition memory to delay and brief exposure manipulations.