The effects of complexity on confidence ratings in linguistic integration.

Bransford and Franks (1971) introduced a paradigm for the study of linguistic integration. Their primary measure was subjects' rated confidence in their responses. The present paper considers the appropriateness of this dependent variable, and concludes that the relation between sentence complexity and rated confidence is too small and unstable to justify the emphasis which confidence ratings have received. Further, certain differences between concrete and abstract sentences were obscured by a confidence analysis. The proportion of old responses is championed as a more appropriate dependent variable. Finally, it is shown that increasing the amount of specific memory necessarily decreases the size of the complexity effect.