Subjective memorability and the mirror effect.

The mirror effect refers to the common finding that hit and false alarm rates on a recognition test are inversely related. The present research investigated the generality of the mirror effect (to rare words) and tested whether the effect might be grounded in accurate estimates of word memorability. The first 2 experiments showed that although high- and low-frequency words exhibit a mirror effect, rare words do not. Furthermore, contrary to expectations, Ss consistently (and mistakenly) predicted that memorability was directly correlated with frequency of usage. These findings weight against the idea that the mirror effect arises because of a S's ability to reject low-frequency lures on the grounds that such words would have been remembered had they appeared previously. Instead, the rejection of lures from different frequency categories may be determined by their semantic or phonemic overlap with list targets, and an analysis along these lines may help to explain why rare words constitute an exception to the otherwise ubiquitous mirror effect.