In a recognition memory test, a participant is presented with some or all of a set of "old" stimuli that were encoded earlier, as well as several "new" stimuli that were not previously presented. The participant's task is to indicate whether each stimulus is old or new. Responses in recognition memory tests are commonly sorted into four classes: Hits ("old" response to an old stimulus), Misses ("new" response to an old stimulus), False Alarms ("old" response to a new stimulus), and Correct Rejections ("new" response to a new stimulus). By comparing the percentage of responses that fall into each of these classes, the experimenter can assess both a participant's ability to discriminate between old and new stimuli, and his or her tendency to provide a particular response regardless of the type of stimulus presented. In many recognition memory tests, each old/new judgment is followed by a prompt asking participants to indicate either how confident they are in that old/new judgment, or what type of subjective experience was elicited by the stimulus being judged (e.g., was the old/new judgment accompanied by a vivid recollection of the encoding experience). This additional information can be used to generate and test more precise hypotheses about how recognition memory decisions are made.
Synonyms: old-new recognition Definition contributed by MCraddock about four months ago.