Processing fluency affects subjective claims of recollection

Previous studies that have used the remember-know paradigm to investigate subjective awareness in memory have shown that fluency manipulations have an impact on know responses but not on remember responses (e.g., Rajaram, 1993), a finding typically accounted for by invoking inferential processing in judgments of familiarity but not of recollection. However, in light of several researchers' criticisms of this procedure, as well as findings documenting the influence of processing fluency on various subjective judgments, the present study was conducted in order to investigate whether judgments of recollection might also be subject to inferential processes and not solely the product of conscious retrieval. When the standard remember-know procedure was used (Experiment 1), manipulations of perceptual fluency increased know responses but had no effect on remember responses, replicating previous findings. However, when an independent ratings method was employed (Higham & Vokey, 2004), manipulations of perceptual fluency (Experiment 2) and conceptual fluency (Experiment 3) reliably increased claims of both familiarity and recollection, suggesting that the conclusion that fluency affects only know responses may be an artifact of the standard remember-know procedure.