Recognition of categorised words: repetition effects in rote study.

In the recognition-memory mirror effect one stimulus class exhibits both more hits and fewer false alarms than a contrasting class. This outcome is frequently detected when strong (e.g., repeated, long-duration study) and weak items have appeared in different lists but less so within lists. The mirror effect may reflect people's assignment of a more lenient recognition criterion to the weak than the strong class. The present study asked whether a paradigm that has yielded within-list mirror effects when participants make gist ratings during study (Singer, 2009, 2011) likewise obtains in rote study. In Experiments 1 and 2 people studied words from category pairs such that the stimuli from one category only were repeated three times. Both hits and false alarms were consistently higher for the repeated than the unrepeated condition, a pattern labelled "concordant" (rather than mirror). This might reflect the either a positive "distribution shift" of the repeated-category lures or a metacognitive strategy. Experiment 3 coupled the same study procedure with two-alternative forced-choice testing (2AFC) to deny the distribution shift explanation. The sorts of strategy that might favour repeated over unrepeated lures are considered.