PICTURES, IMAGES, AND RECOLLECTIVE EXPERIENCE

Five experiments investigated the influence of picture processing on r ecollective experience in recognition memory. Subjects studied items t hat differed in visual or imaginal detail, such as pictures versus wor ds and high-imageability versus low-imageability words, and performed orienting tasks that directed processing either toward a stimulus as a word or toward a stimulus as a picture or image. Standard effects of imageability (e.g., the picture superiority effect and memory advantag es following imagery) were obtained only in recognition judgments that featured recollective experience and were eliminated or reversed when recognition was not accompanied by recollective experience. It is pro posed that conscious recollective experience in recognition memory is cued by attributes of retrieved memories such as sensory-perceptual at tributes and records of cognitive operations performed at encoding.