THE EFFECT OF CONTEXT AND METAMEMORY JUDGMENTS ON AUTOMATIC PROCESSESIN MEMORY

These experiments examine two aspects of the automatic influences on m emory as measured by target responding in the exclusion condition with in the process dissociation framework, In Experiment 1, we examine the extent to which congruency between study and test contexts affects au tomatic processes in memory, In Experiment 2, we investigate qualitati ve differences in consciously controlled and automatic processing as i ndexed by metamemory judgements, In both experiments, a process-dissoc iation procedure was used to separate automatic and consciously contro lled uses of memory in a stem completion task, In the study phase of E xperiment 1, subjects read a passage from one of two directed perspect ives. The subsequent stem completion task, which subjects performed wh ile mindful of the study perspective, contained (a) old words congruen t with the directed perspective, (b) old words congruent with a differ ent (non-directed) perspective, and (c) words that had not been presen ted, Estimates of automatic influences for words congruent with the di rected perspective were found to be greater than estimates for words i ncongruent with the directed perspective, These results provide eviden ce for the automatic or unconscious influences of meaning on task perf ormance, which is uncontaminated by the influence of consciously contr olled recollection which may occur in indirect memory tests, In Experi ment 2, judgements of learning made prior to retrieval under inclusion and exclusion instructions were found to be different for consciously controlled and automatic processes, suggesting that memory as measure d by the opposition (exclusion) procedure is involuntary and unconscio us, with prospective monitoring of performance not sensitive to eventu al performance. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.